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GREAT 

SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 
OF  AMERICA 


WALT  WHITMAN 

ETCHED  BY  JACQUES  REICH  FROM  WHITMAN'S 

LAST  PHOTOGRAPH  TAKEN  BY  THOMAS 

EAKINS  OF  PHILADELPHIA 


GREAT 

SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 
OF  AMERICA 

BY 

GEORGE  HAMLIN  FITCH 

AUTHOR  OF 

"COMFORT  FOUND  IN  GOOD  OLD  BOOKS" 

"MODERN  ENGLISH  BOOKS  OF  POWER" 

"THE  CRITIC  IN  THE  OCCIDENT" 

"THE  CRITIC  IN  THE  ORIENT" 

Great  men  are  they  'who  see  that  spiritual 

is  stronger  than  any  material  force ;  that  thoughts 

rule  the  world.— Emerson:  Progress  of  Culture. 


ILLUSTRATED 


PAUL  ELDER  AND  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 


Copyright, 

by  PAUL  ELDER  AND  COMPANY 
SAN  FRANCISCO 

For  their  assistance   in   the   collection   of  the 
illustrative  matter  in  this  volume,  and  their  courtesy 
in  permitting  its  use,  the  Publishers  gratefully  acknowledge 
their    indebtedness    to    the  following:     University    of 
California  Library;  Doubleday,  Page  &?  Company; 
Harper  &?  Brothers;  Houghton  Mifflin  Corn- 
Company;    Mitchell   Kennerley;    Little, 
Brown  6?  Company;  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons;  Richard  G.  Badger,  The 
Gorham  Press 


• 

• 


-V 

,-V  ••  r*->  >  A 


DEDICATED 

TO  ALL  THOSE  WHO 

HAVE  FOUND  INSPIRATION  IN 

AMERICAN  MEN  OF 

LETTERS 


335660 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION    .     .     ...........       ix 

SPIRIT  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE     .......     xm 

The  Vita)  Force  found  in  the  New  Religion  of  Democ 
racy  —  Emerson,  Whitman  and  Mark  Twain  its 
Great  Apostles. 
EMERSON,  THE  LITERARY  PIONEER  .......         3 

His  Essays,  Full  of  Splendid  Optimism,  Stimulated 

Whitman  and  many  other  American  Writers. 
WALT  WHITMAN,  THE  PROPHET  IN  His  SHIRT-SLEEVES  .       12 
Most  Original  of  all  American  Writers  —  He  Defied 

Conventionality  and  Paid  the  Full  Penalty. 
THE  CHARM  OF  WASHINGTON  IRVING    ......       21 

Genial  Author  of  'fbt  Sketch  Book,  the  First  American 

to  Gain  an  International  Reputation. 
ART  OF  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE    .........       28 

Work  of  the  Finest  Short-Story  Writer  in  America  — 
His  Poems  and  Tales  Translated  into  Many  Lan 
guages. 
HAWTHORNE'S  SOMBER  PURITAN  ROMANCES     ....       37 

The  Scarlet  Letter,  The  House  of  tbt  Seven  Gables  and 
Mosses  Frjm  an  Old  Manse  —  Art  in  The  Marble 
Faun. 
FENIMORE  COOPER'S  ORIGINAL  WORK   ......       48 

His  Tales  of  the  Forest  and  the  Sea  —  Leatherstocking 

and  Long  Tom  Coffin  Known  Around  the  World. 

LONGFELLOW,  THE  POET  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD        ...       58 

More  Popular  Abroad  than  any  other  American  Writer 

of  Verse  —  His  Strong  Sense  of  Nationality. 
LOWELL  AS  POET,  ESSAYIST  AND  CRITIC     .....       68 

His  Commemoration  Ode,  T"he  Biglow  Papers  and  His 

Literary  Essays  His  Best  Work. 

WIT  AND  HUMOR  OF  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  ...       78 
Wise   and  Tender   Passages  in   The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast  fable  —  Some  of  His  Most  Popular  Poems. 

fvl 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

WHITTIER,  THE  PURITAN  SINGER 87 

The  Anti-Slavery  Bard  Whose  Snow  Bound,  'The  1"ent 
on  the  Beach  and  Other  Poems  are  Full  of  Spiritual 
Fire. 

THOREAU,  THE  PIONEER  WRITER  ABOUT  NATURE       .      .       95 
The  Recluse  of  Walden  Pond  who  First  Showed  the 
World  How  to  Live  the  Simple  Life  and  How  to 
Enjoy  Nature. 

FRANCIS  PARKMAN'S  HISTORICAL  WORK 103 

Although  Half-Blind  and  an  Invalid,  He  Described  the 
Long  Struggle  Between  France  and  England  for 
Canada. 

MARK.  TWAIN,  OUR  FINEST  HUMORIST in 

Sprung  from  Poverty,  He  Won  Fame  by  The  Innocents 
Abroad  —  His  best  book,  'The  Adventures  of  Huckle 
berry  Finn. 

BRET  HARTE'S  CALIFORNIA  TALES  AND  POEMS     .     .     .     119 
Pioneer  Life  Among  Gold  Miners  Mirrored  by  a  Mas 
ter  of  the  Short  Story  —  One  of  the  Great  Artists 
in  Verse. 

HOWELLS,  FIRST  OF  LIVING  AMERICAN  NOVELISTS     .     .     127 
A  Genial  Humorist  who  Has  Painted  Many  Phases 

of  Our  Social  Life  —  His  Books  of  Travel. 
MARKHAM,  POET  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE         .      .     .     136 
Wallace  Called  Him  "The  Greatest  Poet  of  the  Social 
Passion" — Fame  Came  with  The  Man  Witb  the  Hoe. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 14? 

Short  Notes  of  Standard  and  Other  Editions,  with 
Lives,  Sketches,  Reminiscences  and  References  to 
Magazine  Articles. 
INDEX  159 


[VI] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 

Walt  Whitman — Etched  by  Jacques  Reich  from  Whitman's 
last  Photograph  taken  by  Thomas  Eakins  of  Philadelphia 
Title 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — From  a  Daguerreotype  taken  for 
Carlylein  May,  1846 6 

The  Home  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — From  a  Photograph 
by  A.  Hosmer 10 

Walt  Whitman — From  a  Photograph  by  Gardner,  Wash 
ington — In  possession  of  Horace  L.  Traubel,  Esq  ...  14 

Washington  Irving,  at  the  age  of  Twenty-seven — An  En 
graving  from  the  Original  Picture  by  Jarvis  ....  22 

Sunnyside — Home  of  Washington  Irving — From  a  Draw 
ing  by  Julian  Rix 0.6 

Edgar  Allan  Poe — From  a  Daugerreotype  made  at  Rich 
mond,  by  Pratt  28 

Edgar  Allan  Poe's  Cottage,  Fordham  — After  a  Drawing 
by  Mie  Pate 32 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  at  the  Age  of  Thirty-six — Etched  by 
S.  A.  Schoff,  from  a  Painting  made  in  1840  by  Charles 
Osgood 40 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne — This  Excellent  Likeness  is  from  an 
Oil  Painting  by  Frances  Osborne,  Painted  in  1893  from 
Photographs  —  Owned  by  the  Essex  Institute  ...  44 

J.  Fenimore  Cooper  —  Engraved  from  the  Painting  by 
C.  L.  Elliott 48 

One  of  the  Vignette  Engravings  reproducing  the  Illustra 
tions  by  F.  O.  C.  Darley,  which  Adorned  the  Early  Edi 
tions  of  Cooper's  Works 52 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  in  1859  —  From  a  Photo 
graph  by  Brady 60 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  in  His  Study  —  From  a 
Photograph  taken  in  1876 64 

[VII] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

James  Russell  Lowell,  in  1857  —  From  a  Crayon  Drawing 
byS.W.  Rowse 68 

Elmwood — The  Home  of  James  Russell  Lowell  at  Cam 
bridge  —  From  a  Photograph  by  B.  F.  Mills  ...  74 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  in  1856  — At  the  Age  of  Forty- 
seven  78 

The  Home  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  in  Cambridge,  Built 
in  1730 8a 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier — In  His  Amesbury  Garden  at  the 
Age  of  Seventy-nine — From  a  Photograph  taken  in  1886  88 

Facsimile  of  the  Manuscript  "My  Triumph,"  by  John 
Greenleaf  Whittier 90 

Henry  David  Thoreau,in  1854  —  From  the  Crayon  Draw 
ing  by  S.  W.  Rowse  in  the  Concord  Public  Library  .  96 

Thoreau's  Cove,  Walden  Pond,  showing  Indian  Path 
Along  Shore 100 

Francis  Parkman  —  From  a  Daguerreotype  taken  about 
1844 I04 

Francis  Parkman  —  From  a  Photograph  taken  in  1882  — 
Copyright  1897  by  Little,  Brown  &  Company  .  .  106 

Mark  Twain  —  From  a  Photograph,  Copyright  1905  by 
Harper  &  Brothers 112 

Mark  Twain's  Birthplace— The  House  Built  by  Judge 
Clemens  in  1836  (now  destroyed)  was  often  pointed  out 
as  the  Birthplace  of  the  Humorist 114 

Bret  Harte  —  From  a  Photograph  taken  by  Hollyer  in 
1896 120 

Facsimile  of  a  Page  of  the  Manuscript  of  the  Famous  Poem 
"The  Heathen  Chinee"  by  Bret  Harte 122 

William  Dean  Howells— A  Characteristic  Portrait     .      .128 

Studio  of  William  Dean  Howells  — The  Interior  of  a  Re 
modeled  Stable,  a  Single,  Large,  Sunny  Room  —  Copy 
right  1911  by  Harper  &  Brothers  132 

Edwin  Markham  —  From  a  Favorite  Photograph  of  Mr. 
Markham  —  Taken  by  W.  E.  Dassonville,  San  Fran 
cisco  136 

Facsimile  of  an  Autograph  Copy  of  a  Quatrain  from  Edwin 
Markham's  "The  Shoes  of  Happiness" 14° 


[  VIII 


Introduction 

rtiis  little  book  is  intended  to  round  out 
and  complete  the  studies  in  literature 
already  issued  in  "Comfort  Found  in  Good 
Old  Books"  and  "Modern  English  Books  of 
Power"  The  first  of  these  was  written  to 
show  that  the  only  abiding  solace  in  grief 
is  to  be  found  in  good  old  books,  which  as 
consolers  surpass  even  the  oldest  and  truest 
of  friends.  It  was  also  written  to  demon 
strate  that  real  culture  does  not  depend  upon 
a  college  education,  but  may  be  gained  by 
anyone  who  has  a  genuine  love  of  good 
literature,  ^he  second  volume  was  designed 
as  a  guide  to  those  who  wish  to  read  the  best 
of  the  great  modern  English  authors  from 
Macaulay  to  Hardy  and  Kipling.  Its  essen 
tial  feature  was  that  no  one  should  attempt 
to  read  all  the  works  of  any  author,  but  that 
two  or  three  of  the  most  characteristic  works 
of  an  author  are  all  that  is  necessary  to  give 
a  good  estimate  of  his  genius.  Upon  these 
as  a  basis  one  may  work  until  he  has  read 
practically  all  that  has  been  written  by  the 
great  modern  English  authors. 

[IX] 


Introduction 

In  this  third  book  I  have  selected  repre 
sentative  American  authors  who  in  my  judg 
ment  best  illustrate  the  national  gen  ius.  The 
limits  of  the  book  make  it  imperative  to 
include  only  a  few  of  the  greatest  writers. 
Some  critics  have  contended  that  there  is  no 
real  American  literature,  as  most  of  our 
writers  have  simply  imitated  English  models. 
Ground  there  may  have  been  for  such  criti 
cism  in  the  early  days  of  the  nation,  but 
with  Washington  Irving  began  what  may  be 
called  a  distinctive  literature,  and  this  was 
enriched  by  a  strong  native  genius  like  Walt 
Whitman,  a  rare  creative  poet  and  romancer 
like  Poe,  and  a  master  of  tragic  spiritual 
drama  like  Hawthorne.  It  may  be  literary 
heresy,  but  to  my  mind  Emerson  is  a  jar 
more  stimulating  literary  force  than  Carlyle, 
Cooper  a  finer  story-teller  than  most  of 
his  English  contemporaries,  while  Lowell, 
Holmes,  Parkman,  Bret  Harte  and  Mark 
Twain  have  a  racy  national  quality  and  a 
creative  literary  power  that  set  them  apart 
and  make  them  well  worth  study.  Of  these, 
the  next  century  will  probably  appraise 
Mark  Twain  as  the  greatest,  for  aside  from 
being  the  finest  humorist  that  America  has 
produced,  he  will  also  take  rank  among  the 
greatest  story-tellers  of  all  ages. 

[x] 


Introduction 

My  aim  in  this  book  has  been  to  arouse 
interest  in  these  great  American  writers  who 
are  so  little  known  to  most  readers  and  to 
indicate  their  best  works.  Certainly  no  true 
American  can  afford  to  be  ignorant  of  the 
writers  who  have  made  our  literature  known 
to  the  world.  And  this  is  especially  true  in 
these  dark  days,  when  the  United  States 
stands  alone  as  the  only  great  civilized  power 
that  is  not  striving  to  gain  territory  or  some 
other  advantage  from  the  nations  now  locked 
fast  in  the  most  desperate  and  destructive  war 
of  all  history. 


[XI] 


Spirit  of 
American  Literature 

Vital  Force  Found  in  the  New  Religion 
Of  Democracy  —  Emerson,  Whitman  and 
Mark  Twain  Its  Great  Apostles. 

.AMERICAN  literature  has  been  hurt  more 
•^A-  by  its  friends  than  by  its  enemies. 
Jeffrey  s  sneering  query,  "Who  reads  an 
American  book?"  was  not  so  deadly  as  the 
praise  by  historians  of  our  literature  of  such 
unreadable  works  as  Judd's  "Margaret. "  In 
dealing  with  literature,  why  waste  time 
or  energy  on  books  that  have  no  claim  as 
real  literature?  Hundreds  of  books  are 
issued  every  year  that  serve  their  purpose  as 
text  books  and  manuals  of  reference;  other 
hundreds  serve  to  amuse  readers;  but  if  a 
year  sees  the  publication  of  a  real  book,  full 
of  the  genuine  spiritual  quality  that  ensures 
immortality,  then  that  year  is  worthy  of  being 
marked  in  red  letters.  In  the  history  of  any 
literature  it  is  astonishing  to  find  how  few 
are  the  books  that  may  be  called  immortal. 


Spirit  of  American  Literature 

In  Ms  analysis  of  great  American  writers , 
many  readers  may  find  that  I  have  omitted 
several  of  their  favorite  authors.  Such  omis 
sions  are  unavoidable  because  among  hun 
dreds  of  contemporary  writers,  it  is  difficult 
to  select  those  who  best  represent  the  national 
spirit.  Of  the  great  names  in  American 
literature  —  Emerson,  Whitman,  Irving, 
Cooper,  Poe,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes, 
Whittier,  Hawthorne,  ^Thoreau,  Mark  Twain, 
Bret  Harte  and  Howells  —  not  one  can  be 
omitted.  Of  the  others,  some  substantial 
reasons  are  given  for  selecting  Parkman  and 
Edwin  Markham. 

Every  one  of  these  authors  gives  ample 
proof  in  his  best  works  of  that  spiritual 
quality  which  is  the  unfailing  test  of  immor 
tality.  In  this  new  world,  where  material 
development  claimed  men's  attention  and 
absorbed  their  energies  for  two  centuries,  the 
wonder  is  that  anything  like  an  original 
literature  should  have  taken  root  even  after 
two  hundred  years.  Only  the  influence  of 
the  strong  new  thought  germinated  by  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  wrought  this 
miracle  of  a  genuine  national  literature. 
Colonies  do  not  produce  literature,  as  may 
be  seen  in  the  history  of  Australia  and 
Canada.  Even  republics,  like  those  of  South 

[xiv] 


Spirit  of  American  Literature 

America,  which  are  only  oligarchies  mas 
querading  under  the  symbols  of  freedom, 
have  proved  sterile  in  real  literature. 

The  man  who  drafted  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  his  associates  who  helped 
to  make  it  a  reality,  laid  broad  and  enduring 
the  foundations  of  American  literature. 
From  it,  as  from  the  experiments  that  have 
been  made  since  this  government  was  made 
an  actual  fact,  has  sprung  a  literature  dis 
tinct  from  any  that  the  world  has  ever  known. 
American  ideals,  although  they  have  been 
slow  to  be  recognized  by  skeptical  Europe, 
are  as  distinct  from  anything  found  in  the 
Old  World  as  American  life  is  distinct  from 
that  of  England,  France  or  Germany  of  today. 
It  is  only  within  the  memory  of  the  present 
generation  that  the  United  States  has  come 
to  be  recognized  as  a  world  power.  England 
and  Germany  looked  upon  our  experiment 
in  the  Philippines  as  a  bit  of  altruism  which 
would  soon  be  changed  to  a  regular  selfish 
colonial  government  like  that  of  India  or 
Southwest  Africa.  They  regarded  our  action 
in  returning  the  Boxer  indemnity  to  China 
and  our  refusal  to  seize  any  Chinese  territory, 
as  national  idealism,  which  was  inconsistent 
with  real  patriotism.  The  course  of  the 
United  States  in  this  great  European  war  is 

[XV] 


Spirit  of  American  Literature 

not  understood  abroad.  It  is  as  great  a 
mystery  as  our  generosity  in  feeding  the 
Belgians,  This  is  not  strange  when  we  see 
the  astonishing  spectacle  of  nations  like  Italy  y 
Greece  and  Roumania  bargaining  for  terri 
tory  with  both  sides  in  the  present  conflict. 

President  Wilson  has  voiced  in  eloquent 
words  this  new  American  doctrine  of  the 
Golden  Rule  as  applied  to  national  affairs, 
but  in  all  the  European  chancelleries  his 
genuine  idealism  is  regarded  as  mere  rhetoric. 

o  o 

Diplomats  who  have  grown  gray  inventing 
devices  to  overreach  their  opponents  cannot 
be  made  to  believe  that  the  doctrines  of  Christ 
may  be  applied  to  the  affairs  of  nations.  In 
fac^  they  look  upon  American  diplomacy 
with  that  polite  condescension  which  is  more 
annoying  than  open  unbelief.  Tet  anyone 
who  knows  American  life  accepts  without 
question  the  President's  words  as  typical  of 
American  public  opinion.  The  course  of 
this  government  in  the  present  war  is  simply 
the  natural  development  of  that  religion  of 
democracy  preached  by  Emerson,  Whitman 
and  Mark  'Twain  —  the  three  greatest  origi 
nal  forces  in  American  literature.  You  will 
not  find  any  believers  in  that  religion  in  the 
Old  World,  except  a  few  idealists  who  are 
looked  upon  as  dangerous  cranks.  Only  one 

[xvi] 


Spirit  of  American  Literature 

man  with  the  real  American  spirit  has  come 
to  the  front  in  the  great  emergency  produced 
by  this  war.  That  is  Lloyd  George,  the 
English  Minister  of  Munitions,  who  has 
upset  all  the  cherished  traditions  of  British 
government,  but  has  gained  in  influence  and 
popularity.  He  is  the  only  public  man  who 
has  had  the  courage  to  warn  the  British  nation 
of  its  peril  caused  by  incompetency  among 
its  rulers.  His  is  the  only  voice  which  has 
denounced  the  incredible  selfishness  of  the 
British  labor  unions  in  checking  the  produc 
tion  of  munitions  and  thus  causing  the  waste 
of  thousands  of  brave  soldiers  and  millions 
of  money.  Lloyd  George  represents  real 
American  democracy  in  its  battle  with  the 
long  intrenched  forces  of  a  selfish  oligarchy 
of  the  privileged  classes. 

American  literature,  as  seen  in  its  great 
spiritual  writers,  is  simply  the  logical  work 
ing  out  of  the  forces  that  were  first  put  into 
eloquent  words  by  'Thomas  Jefferson.  The 
warfare  upon  privilege,  the  throwing  wide 
open  of  the  gates  of  opportunity  to  every  man 
who  proves  his  capacity,  no  matter  what  his 
birth  or  social  station,  the  encouragement  of 
the  poor  boy  to  seek  an  education  that  will 
lift  him  out  of  the  ranks  of  the  hewers  of 
wood  and  the  drawers  of  water,  the  enforce- 

\  xvn  1 


Spirit  of  *  American  Literature 

went  oftbe  doctrine  that  manual  labor  brings 
no  shame  or  reproach  and  that  a  gentleman 
may  be  a  gentleman  although  he  works  with 
his  hands  and  wears  no  gloves  —  these  are 
the  vital)  fundamental  truths  which  all  the 
great  American  writers  have  preached  in 
their  works,  whether  in  prose  or  verse.  And 
their  words  have  had  potency  and  power 
because  they  represent  the  convictions  of 
millions  of  plain  Americans,  whom  wealth 
cannot  spoil. 

Emerson  was  the  first  American  writer  to 
put  these  great  truths  into  words  that  have 
everlasting  life.  His  noteworthy  address, 
The  American  Scholar,  has  probably  had 
more  direct  influence  upon  young  Americans 
than  any  other  single  piece  of  our  literature. 
It  aroused  Walt  Whitman  and  led  to  the 
production  of  his  "Leaves  of  Grass"  and 
his  prose  declaration  of  literary  independence. 
Whitman's  utterances  were  denounced  by 
conservative  critics,  but  many  of  the  foremost 
American  and  English  writers  of  his  day 
welcomed  his  work  as  a  strong,  new  note  in 
literature. 

This  religion  of  democracy,  preached  by 
Emerson  and  Whitman,  found  one  of  its 
most  eloquent  disciples  in  our  day  in  Mark 
Twain.  Long  regarded  merely  as  a  humor- 

[  xvin  ] 


Spirit  of  American  Literature 

isfy  Mark  'Twain  came  into  his  own  kingdom 
more  than  twenty  years  ago,  and  today  he  is 
recognized  by  the  best  critics  as  among  the 
foremost  of  American  authors.  Sprung  from 
the  people,  with  no  early  advantages,  his 
literary  genius  forced  him  to  abandon  the 
work  of  a  Mississippi  river  pilot  in  which 
he  had  achieved  success,  and  to  devote  himself 
to  literary  work.  A  hater  of  all  social  dis 
tinctions,  of  all  shams  and  pretences,  Mark 
'Twain  was  the  most  eloquent  advocate  of 
democracy  of  his  age.  His  "Huckleberry 
Finn  "  may  be  recognized  by  the  next  century 
as  the  great  American  novel  for  which  the 
Wise  Men  of  Literature  have  watched  for  so 
many  years. 

All  the  authors  whose  works  are  discussed 
in  this  volume  are  distinctly  American.  All 
have  the  spiritual  quality  so  strongly  devel 
oped  that  even  the  careless  reader  feels  its 
powerful  influence  behind  their  words.  All 
were  passionate  believers  in  the  literature 
which  they  helped  to  make  famous.  And 
not  one  of  them  will  fail  to  give  rich  results 
in  culture  and  enjoyment  as  the  consequence 
of  the  study  of  his  work. 


xix  ] 


GREAT 

SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 
OF  AMERICA 


EMERSON 

THE  LITERARY 

PIONEER 

His  ESSAYS,  FULL  OF  SPLENDID  OPTI 
MISM,  STIMULATED  WHITMAN  AND  MANY 
OTHER  AMERICAN  WRITERS. 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  deserves  the 
first  place  in  any  survey  of  American 
literature.  Without  him,  American  writ 
ers  would  have  continued  for  another 
generation  the  imitation  of  English  models. 
He  pronounced  the  declaration  of  American 
literary  independence  as  Jefferson  drafted 
the  declaration  of  our  political  indepen 
dence.  Whitman  acknowledged  his  debt 
to  Emerson,  and  Whitman,  whatever  his 
faults,  is  still  our  most  original  man  of 
letters.  Emerson  also  has  had  a  more 
vital  influence  on  young  readers  and  on 
college  students  than  any  other  American 
writer.  The  years  that  have  relegated  so 
many  of  his  contemporaries  to  the  top 

[3] 


GPEAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

shelf  have  not  lessened  his  popularity. 
His  books  still  sell  by  the  thousand  and 
they  are  read  eagerly  by  young  Americans 
of  all  classes.  To  the  young  man  or 
woman,  forced  to  work  for  a  living  and 
struggling  at  night  to  get  an  education, 
Emerson  is  a  tower  of  strength.  His  words 
are  a  stimulus  which  cannot  be  measured; 
he  gives  spiritual  comfort  that  girds  up 
the  loins  of  the  lonely  student. 

Above  all,  in  this  material  age,  Emerson 
comes  with  a  message  which  appeals  power 
fully  to  youth,  which  has  not  lost  its  ideals. 
His  has  been  the  duty  to  keep  alive  the 
high,  unselfish  purposes  of  the  scholar  in 
these  days  when  wealth  and  power  seek  to 
seduce  the  ablest  of  young  Americans.  He 
is  the  High  Priest  of  the  spiritual  who  passes 
along  the  torch  of  culture  to  the  hands  of 
the  younger  generations. 

Emerson  was  one  of  the  few  American 
authors  whose  mere  presence  impressed 
any  assembly.  Though  never  given  to 
posing,  so  great  was  his  personal  force  and 
so  high  the  distinction  of  his  face  and  his 
manner  that  all  gave  him  homage.  And 
the  wonder  of  this  tribute  was  that  the 
man  himself  was  absolutely  detached  from 
the  things  of  this  world.  As  he  himself  so 

[4] 


EMERSON,  THE  LITERARY  PIONEER 

well  expressed  it,  he  saw  even  the  people 
in  his  own  household  "as  across  a  gulf/' 
He  had  the  detachment  of  great  genius. 
He  had  no  intimates  and  he  never  made 
any  effort  to  cultivate  friendships.  His 
indifference  to  the  work  of  his  contem 
poraries  of  genius  was  profound  and  dis 
concerting.  Thus  he  never  could  read  any 
of  Hawthorne's  exquisite  tales,  and  he 
could  not  even  appreciate  ¥he  Scarlet 
Letter,  which,  with  some  of  his  own  essays. 
has  been  given  by  critics  the  highest  place 
in  the  Pantheon  of  American  literary 
achievement. 

To  treat  Emerson  like  the  ordinary 
writer  of  essays  is  to  mistake  his  vocation. 
He  is  a  seer  and  a  prophet;  but  above  all 
he  is  the  greatest  teacher  and  inspirer  of 
thought  and  work  this  country  has  ever 
known.  And  it  is  as  a  teacher  that  his 
fame  will  endure.  His  essays  are  merely 
the  elaboration  of  the  lectures  and  addresses 
which  he  delivered  before  college  and 
lyceum  audiences,  in  an  age  when  the 
desire  for  culture  was  as  eager  as  is  now 
the  desire  for  money  and  pleasure.  The 
Puritan  conscience  had  not  lost  its  keen 
edge  when  Emerson  was  in  his  prime,  and 
it  was  his  great  distinction  that  he  could 

[5] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

appeal  to  this  conscience  with  a  force  and 
a  directness  possessed  by  no  other  writer 
or  lecturer  of  his  day. 

Absolutely  free  from  all  religious  restric 
tions,  Emerson  yet  laid  down  the  moral 
law  with  a  power  that  moves  one  still,  as 
it  once  swayed  and  stimulated  New  Eng 
land  audiences.  The  men  of  today  of 
larger  culture  and  greater  literary  skill 
may  marvel  at  Emerson's  influence,  but  it 
endures,  and  American  school  and  college 
youth  of  our  day  feel  the  force  of  Emerson's 
vitalizing  words,  with  almost  the  same 
kindling  power  that  moved  those  who  sat 
at  his  feet  and  looked  upon  his  face  when 
visions  came  to  him  and  were  revealed  to 
those  who  had  not  his  outlook  upon  the 
Promised  Land. 

So  Emerson  is  one  of  the  few  great 
authors  whose  work  must  be  tasted,  not 
eaten.  He  is  like  caviare  to  the  great 
reading  public,  because  he  is  merely  a 
stimulus  to  thought.  His  essays  must  be 
taken  in  small  doses,  lest  one  have  a  surfeit 
of  their  richness  of  condensed  thought. 
To  read  Emerson  continuously,  as  one 
reads  Macaulay  or  even  Carlyle,  is  fatal; 
as  well  try  to  digest  the  intellectual  pemmi- 
can  of  Bacon's  essays.  Emerson's  essays, 

[6] 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 

FROM  A  DAGUERREOTYPE  TAKEN  FOR  CARLYLE 
IN  MAY,  1846 


EMERSON,  THE  LITERARY  PIONEER 

which,  with  Representative  Men,  contain 
all  his  best  work,  are  to  be  regarded  as 
stimulants  to  the  intellectual  life.  They 
are  to  be  read  by  single  pages,  or,  better, 
by  single  passages.  Oftentimes  a  single 
sentence  will  give  one  food  for  thought. 
And  the  remarkable  feature  of  Emerson 
is  that  he  seems  to  have  an  answer  for  all 
one's  needs,  just  as  the  Bible  has;  for  his 
was  a  primitive  nature  that  stripped  away 
all  conventions  and  dared  to  look  on  life 
with  the  eyes  of  a  pagan,  unafraid  and 
unashamed.  He  is  as  elemental  as  the 
writer  of  the  Book  of  Job. 

Emerson  lived  an  uneventful  life,  but  it 
is  difficult  to  imagine  the  New  England  of 
sixty  years  ago  without  his  dominating 
figure.  He  came  of  a  family  of  preachers 
and  he  was  bred  for  the  church.  He 
gained  no  distinction  in  college,  which  he 
entered  at  the  early  age  of  fifteen  years, 
save  that  he  won  a  second  prize  for  Eng 
lish  composition  in  his  senior  year.  He 
attended  a  divinity  school,  but  weakness 
of  the  eyes  excused  him  from  taking  notes 
in  class  and  from  entering  examinations. 
As  he  remarked  later  in  life,  with  dry 
humor,  "If  they  had  examined  me  they 
probably  would  not  have  let  me  preach  at 

[7] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

all."  When  twenty-three  years  old  he  was 
authorized  to  preach,  but  weak  lungs  drove 
him  to  the  milder  climate  of  South  Carolina 
and  Florida.  In  Charleston  he  preached 
several  times,  and  on  his  return  he  was 
ordained  as  colleague  of  Dr.  Ware  in  the 
Second  Church  of  Boston. 

Three  years  later  Emerson  caused  a  great 
sensation  by  preaching  a  sermon  in  which 
he  expressed  doubts  of  his  right  to  admin 
ister  communion  and  his  determination  to 
resign  his  pastorate.  The  following  year 
he  went  to  Europe  and  saw  many  famous 
literary  men,  notably  Carlyle,  whom  he 
visited  for  a  week  at  his  lonesome  Scotch 
retreat  at  Craigenputtock.  In  the  follow 
ing  year  he  returned  to  Concord,  Massa 
chusetts,  and  began  the  career  of  lecturing 
and  writing  which  was  to  continue  for 
fifty  years. 

Emerson  was  among  the  first  of  the  New 
England  lecturers  who  established  the 
lyceum  system  that  endured  for  more  than 
half  a  century  and  was  one  of  the  most 
important  factors  in  popular  education  in 
this  country.  Emerson's  first  le&ures  were 
on  his  experiences  in  Europe.  Then  he 
took  up  the  biographies  of  great  men, 
several  of  these  lectures  appearing  after- 


EMERSON,  THE  LITERARY  PIONEER 

ward  in  Representative  Men,  a  book  that 
is  as  vital  and  suggestive  as  Carlyle's 
Heroes  and  Hero  Worship.  Then  followed 
a  series  of  lectures  before  academies  and 
lyceums  on  such  subjects  as  English  Liter 
ature^  'The  Philosophy  of  History  and 
Human  Culture. 

His  first  book,  entitled  Nature,  appeared 
anonymously  in  1836  and  was  welcomed 
by  all  scholars,  but  it  was  not  until  the 
following  year  that  Emerson  gained  great 
vogue  and  was  recognized  as  a  leader  of 
American  thought.  The  American  Scholar, 
his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Harvard 
in  August,  1837,  was  really  the  starting 
point  of  his  career.  It  may  be  read  with 
profit  in  these  days,  when  the  noble  ideals 
for  which  Emerson  pleaded  so  eloquently 
are  apt  to  be  forgotten  in  the  fierce  desire 
for  money  and  success. 

From  this  period  Emerson  advanced 
with  strength  and  confidence.  He  con 
tinued  to  deliver  lectures  that  stimulated 
while  they  puzzled  his  audiences,  and  the 
seed  thoughts  of  these  lectures  he  put  into 
his  books.  Also  he  wrote  poems  full  of 
beautiful  thoughts,  cast  in  language  which 
is  frequently  not  poetical.  He  was  a 
voluminous  writer,  and  by  1850  he  was 

[9] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

firmly  established  as  the  foremost  figure 
in  every  American  movement  for  free 
thought  and  free  speech.  He  preached  the 
doctrine  of  culture  in  an  age  when  edu 
cation  was  the  hobby  of  most  teachers, 
and  he  laid  down  the  law  that  no  amount 
of  knowledge  will  ever  bring  culture.  His 
voice  was  always  raised  for  the  greatest 
tolerance  in  religion  and  the  largest  liberty 
in  speech. 

Thus  Emerson  came  to  be  the  recognized 
head  of  all  the  New  England  ethical  move 
ments  that  have  fertilized  thought  in  this 
country  and  inspired  high  ideals.  What 
this  country  owes  to  him  can  never  be 
estimated.  His  statue  should  be  placed  in 
every  large  American  city,  so  that  the 
younger  generation  may  see  that  the 
people  recognize  Emerson  as  our  greatest 
apostle  of  free  thought  and  the  intellectual 
life. 

You  cannot  go  amiss  in  reading  his 
essays.  Begin  with  that  immortal  address 
on  The  American  Scholar,  and  then  take 
up  any  of  the  essays  that  appeals  to  you. 
Read  it  by  single  pages,  and  look  up  any 
references  that  are  not  clear.  Think  over 
the  things  that  Emerson  lays  down  as 
laws.  You  will  find  nearly  every  page  full 

[10] 


EMERSON,  THE  LITERARY  PIONEER 

of  meat.  But  do  not  commit  the  folly  of 
attempting  to  read  Emerson  as  you  would 
read  Lowell  or  Whipple  or  Stedman.  He 
is  not  consecutive,  and  disgust  will  be 
your  portion.  Take  him  as  you  would  take 
a  tonic,  in  small  doses,  and  you  will  find 
him  an  extraordinary  stimulant  to  work 
and  thought,  better  than  any  other  writer, 
unless  it  be  Carlyle  at  his  best. 

And  you  will  find  that  this  man,  who 
apparently  took  no  count  of  style,  has  a 
style  that  is  unrivaled  for  terseness,  force 
and  beauty.  As  Lowell  so  well  says, 
"His  eye  for  a  fine,  telling  phrase  that  will 
carry  true  is  like  that  of  a  backwoodsman 
for  a  rifle,  and  he  will  dredge  up  a  choice 
word  from  the  mud  of  Cotton  Mather 
himself."  Emerson  charged  every  word 
with  meaning.  He  wrote  with  the  con 
densed  force  of  the  Latin,  but  he  used  the 
simple  words,  the  homespun  phrases  that 
go  straight  to  the  American  heart. 


WALT  WHITMAN 

THE  PROPHET  IN  His 

SHIRT-SLEEVES 

MOST  ORIGINAL  OF  ALL  AMERICAN  WRIT 
ERS  —  HE  DEFIED  CONVENTIONALITY 
AND  PAID  THE  FULL  PENALTY. 

WALT  WHITMAN  is  the  most  original 
of  American  authors  in  form,  in 
thought,  and  in  expression.  Yet  he  is  a 
fine  instance  of  the  prophet  who  is  not 
without  honor  save  in  his  own  country. 
From  the  time  that  Whitman  issued  his 
Leaves  of  Grass  he  had  far  more  readers 
and  admirers  in  England  than  in  this 
country.  It  is  only  within  the  last  few 
years  that  interest  in  Whitman  and  his 
work  has  extended  in  America  beyond 
mere  curiosity.  Even  now  it  is  rare  to 
find  well-read  Americans  who  have  any 
close  acquaintance  with  Whitman's  work, 
especially  with  the  prose  sketches  which 
he  wrote  in  his  later  years  and  which  con- 

[12] 


THE  PROPHET  IN  His  SHIRT-SLEEVES 

tain  some  of  his  best  thought.  Most 
Americans  seem  content  to  read  articles 
about  Whitman  instead  of  reading  his 
verse  and  prose. 

Walt  Whitman  could  have  developed  in 
no  other  country  than  this.  With  small 
school  education,  he  labored  for  many 
years  to  gather  the  curious  information 
which  may  be  found  scattered  through  his 
works.  He  never  could  lay  any  claim  to 
scholarship,  but  he  certainly  gained  as 
thorough  a  knowledge  of  the  great  writers 
of  classical  and  modern  times  as  any  reader 
of  English  alone  could  secure.  And  he 
appraised  all  these  writers  in  his  own  way, 
uninfluenced  by  the  opinions  of  critics  or 
admirers.  From  each  he  drew  some  meas 
ure  of  stimulus  or  inspiration,  and  his 
criticism  of  their  literary  value  is  always 
well  worth  reading. 

The  development  of  Walt  Whitman's 
genius  is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  literature. 
Here  was  a  stolid,  lymphatic  boy,  of  more 
than  ordinary  physical  strength,  yet  of 
great  deliberation  of  movement,  who  was 
endowed  with  a  high-strung  nervous  sys 
tem.  The  result  was  that  in  early  youth 
he  was  swept  by  desires  and  sensations 
which  he  could  not  understand.  Often  the 

[13] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

presence  of  others  could  not  be  endured. 
Then  he  would  make  trips  to  the  woods 
or  the  seashore,  where  in  undisturbed  soli 
tude  he  was  able  to  read  and  enjoy 
the  world's  great  masterpieces.  Constant 
brooding  over  the  desire  to  produce  a  book 
in  which  a  real  man's  passion  and  thought 
should  be  mirrored,  induced  a  kind  of 
mystic  state  in  which  the  body  remained 
inert,  while  the  mind  seemed  to  gain  abso 
lute  freedom  and  to  work  in  space.  Some 
thing  of  the  same  result  is  achieved  by  the 
East  Indian  mystics  after  long  cultivation 
of  the  power  of  self-hypnosis.  That  much 
of  Whitman's  first  work  was  produced 
under  these  conditions  seems  certain.  In 
no  other  way  can  one  explain  the  sense  of 
exaltation  that  carries  him  along  and  that 
gives  to  his  long  resounding  lines  some 
thing  of  the  rhythmical  sweep  of  waves  on 
the  seashore. 

Nothing  in  Whitman's  early  life  can 
explain  his  curious  mental  development  or 
the  first  fruits  of  it  —  Leaves  of  Grass. 
Whitman  was  of  mixed  English  and  Dutch 
stock;  he  spent  most  of  his  early  years  in 
a  peaceful  village  of  Long  Island;  his  early 
impressions  were  of  rural  sights  and  sounds 
and  of  the  seashore,  which  always  pro- 


WALT  WHITMAN 

FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  GARDNER,  WASHINGTON 
IN  POSSESSION  OF  HORACE  L.  TRAUBEL,  ESQ. 


THE  PROPHET  IN  His  SHIRT-SLEEVES 

foundly  appealed  to  him.  After  a  common 
school  education  he  became  a  printer  and 
for  ten  years  either  worked  at  the  case  or 
wrote  for  various  publications.  In  these 
formative  years  he  wrote  many  stories  and 
sketches  which  were  merely  imitations  of 
work  that  he  had  read.  He  varied  his 
literary  occupations  with  teaching  and 
with  work  at  his  father's  trade  of  carpen 
tering;  but  through  all  these  apprentice 
years  he  was  an  eager  devourer  of  books, 
a  constant  attendant  at  the  theater  and 
the  opera,  and  a  close  student  of  the  life 
of  New  York  streets,  of  which  he  never 
tired. 

At  the  mature  age  of  thirty-five  years, 
he  suddenly  dropped  all  other  activities 
and  devoted  himself  to  writing  his  great 
work,  which  was  to  be  unique  in  the  fact 
that  it  included  the  cosmic  life  of  man. 
But  Whitman  did  not  don  singing  robes 
and  produce  his  poem  out  of  the  fulness  of 
thought  and  emotion.  He  labored  over  it 
with  painstaking  care,  rewriting  most  of  it 
no  less  than  five  times  before  it  satisfied 
him.  He  also  wrote  a  long  preface  in 
which  he  tried  to  demonstrate  the  prin 
ciples  of  a  national  literature.  He  could 
have  rewritten  this  preface  with  profit,  as 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

many  passages  are  so  filled  with  the  spirit 
of  a  vague  transcendentalism  that  it  is 
difficult  to  grasp  their  meaning. 

Whitman  wrought  on  additional  poems 
to  his  Leaves  of  Grass  until  the  second  year 
of  the  war.  Then  the  news  that  his 
younger  brother,  who  had  volunteered,  was 
wounded,  took  him  to  Washington.  He 
found  his  brother  only  slightly  hurt,  but 
the  spectacle  of  the  thousands  of  wounded 
borne  to  improvised  hospitals  at  the  capital 
profoundly  moved  Whitman.  He  deter 
mined  to  stay  in  Washington  and  do  some 
thing  to  help  these  wounded  soldier  boys. 
Many  he  found  suffering  from  homesick 
ness:  these  he  cheered.  Every  day  he 
carried  into  the  hospitals  in  a  haversack 
little  necessaries  and  comforts,  letter  paper, 
'envelopes  and  stamps.  When  a  man  could 
not  write,  Whitman  wrote  letters  for  him. 
This  service  he  continued  for  months,  and 
the  testimony  of  many  who  witnessed  his 
work  was  that  his  mere  presence,  his  mag 
netic  speech  and  touch,  were  far  more  effec 
tive  than  medicines.  Out  of  this  work  came 
his  truest  book — Drum  Taps — in  which  was 
afterwards  included  his  splendid  tributes  to 
Lincoln,  When  Lilacs  Last  in  the  Dooryard 
Bloomed  and  0  Captain,  My  Captain! 

[16] 


THE  PROPHET  IN  His  SHIRT-SLEEVES 

A  desk  in  the  Indian  Bureau  Whitman 
secured  early  in  1865,  and  the  salary 
allowed  him  to  carry  on  his  work  among 
the  soldiers.  The  unspeakable  bigotry  of 
James  Harlan,  then  Secretary  of  the 
Interior,  cost  Whitman  his  position,  as  the 
Secretary  declared  he  would  not  keep  in 
office  the  author  of  an  indecent  book. 
But  the  poet  was  immediately  transferred 
to  the  United  States  Attorney's  depart 
ment,  and  the  incident  would  have  been 
forgotten  but  for  the  championship  of 
W.  D.  O'Connor,  a  warm  friend,  who  in  a 
pamphlet  entitled  The  Good  Gray  Poet 
defended  Whitman  and  held  Harlan  up  to 
public  scorn.  The  result  was  unfortunate 
for  Whitman,  as  it  revived  the  discussion 
of  what  was  merely  an  incidental  feature 
of  his  poem. 

His  excessive  work  in  the  hospitals  broke 
down  Whitman's  health  and  a  paralytic 
stroke  made  him  almost  helpless  for  several 
months.  But  his  insistence  upon  living  in 
the  open  air  and  his  sane  methods  of  daily 
exercise  finally  worked  a  cure.  Out  of  his 
close  communion  with  Nature  came  a 
collection  of  prose  sketches,  called  Specimen 
Days  and  Collect >  which  contains  some  of  his 
best  work. 

[17] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Whitman's  last  years,  when  he  was  kept 
indoors  by  a  recurrence  of  paralysis,  were 
made  memorable  by  the  homage  paid  to 
him  by  many  famous  men.  His  home  in 
Camden,  New  Jersey,  was  visited  by  hun 
dreds,  some  of  whom  have  left  records  of 
the  wonderful  effect  produced  by  the  sim 
ple  inspiring  presence  of  the  aged  poet. 
Whitman  retained  his  faculties  to  the  end; 
his  death  was  serene,  befitting  the  blame 
less  life  he  had  led  for  years. 

Whitman's  own  definition  of  his  purpose 
in  writing  Leaves  of  Grass  was  "to  articu 
late  and  faithfully  express  in  literary  or 
poetic  form,  and  uncompromisingly,  my 
own  physical,  emotional,  moral,  intellectual 
and  esthetic  Personality,  in  the  midst  of, 
and  tallying,  the  momentous  spirit  and 
facts  of  its  immediate  days  and  of  Current 
America."  He  also  declares  that  he  de 
cided  to  omit  all  "stock  poetical  touches," 
all  references  to  other  poems,  all  allusions 
to  the  classics.  He  would  admit  any  good 
expressive  slang  if  it  fitted  his  meaning. 
In  a  word,  he  proposed  to  write  a  poem 
which  should  be  absolutely  original,  vitally 
American,  and  devoted  to  exploiting  the 
nature,  the  hopes  and  the  ambitions  of  a 
real  man. 

[18] 


THE  PROPHET  IN  His  SHIRT-SLEEVES 

Judged  by  this  standard,  Leaves  of  Grass 
was  a  success.  But  the  American  public 
would  have  nothing  of  it  and  most  of  the 
critics  condemned  it  utterly.  Only  Emer 
son,  Edward  Everett  Hale,  and  a  few  other 
wise  critics  saw  the  great  merits  of  the 
poem  shining  through  its  many  defects. 
Undismayed  by  lack  of  public  appreciation, 
Whitman  soon  got  out  a  second  and  much 
enlarged  edition  of  the  book.  He  refused 
to  soften  or  omit  any  of  the  passages  filled 
with  sexual  imagery  which  offended  Emer 
son  and  many  of  his  friends.  He  declared 
that  these  objections  were  prudish  and 
that  he  would  rest  his  claim  to  fame  on 
the  work  as  he  had  written  it  —  the  full- 
blooded,  declamatory  expression  of  a  Man's 
ideas  of  the  universe.  It  is  difficult  to 
give  a  few  lines  that  will  convey  the  sense 
of  the  power  of  Love  with  which  Whitman 
has  flooded  this  poem,  but  these  verses 
reveal  him  at  his  best  as  a  lover  of  the 
earth: 

I  am  he  that  walks  with  the  tender  and  growing  night, 
I  call  to  the  earth  and  sea  half-held  by  the  night. 
Press  close,  bare-bosom'd  night — press  close,  magnetic  nour 
ishing  night! 

Night  of  south  winds — night  of  the  large  few  stars! 
Still  nodding  night — mad  naked  summer  night. 


Smile,  O  voluptuous  cool-breath'd  earth! 
Earth  of  the  slumbering  and  liquid  trees! 


[19! 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Earth  of  departed  sunset  —  earth  of  the  mountains  misty- 
top  t! 

Earth  of  the  vitreous  pour  of  the  full  moon  just  tinged  with 
blue! 

Earth  of  shine  and  dark  mottling  the  tide  of  the  river! 

Earth  of  the  limpid  gray  of  clouds  brighter  and  clearer  for 
my  sake! 

Far-swooping  elbow'd  earth — rich  apple-blossom'd  earth! 

Smile,  for  your  lover  comes. 

Prodigal,  you  have  given  me  love  —  therefore  I  to  you  give 

love! 
O  unspeakable  passionate  love. 

But  Walt  Whitman  revealed  himself 
more  truly  in  two  minor  books  than  in 
Leaves  of  Grass.  One  is  Drum-Taps,  of 
which  Bliss  Perry  says  it  embodies  "the 
very  spirit  of  the  civil  conflict,  picturing 
war  with  a  poignant  realism,  a  terrible  and 
tender  beauty,  such  as  only  the  great 
masters  of  literature  have  been  able  to 
compass."  The  other,  Speciman  Days  and 
Collect,  is  a  collection  of  prose  sketches 
which  reveal  the  lover  of  man  and  nature 
without  any  rhetorical  posing. 


20] 


THE 

CHARM  OF 
WASHINGTON  IRVING 

GENIAL  AUTHOR  OF  "THE  SKETCH  BOOK," 
THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  TO  GAIN  AN 
INTERNATIONAL  REPUTATION. 

MORE  than  a  half  century  ago  I  was 
a  regular  reader  in  the  old  Mercan 
tile  Library,  then  lodged  over  Platt's  Hall, 
on  Montgomery  street,  in  San  Francisco. 
One  day  the  librarian  showed  me,  with 
much  pride,  a  handsome  library  edition  of 
the  works  of  Washington  Irving,  whose 
recent  death  had  called  out  many  tributes 
in  the  newspapers.  He  was  unknown  to 
me  then,  but  I  took  out  ^he  Sketch  Book, 
and,  after  devouring  this  with  the  keenest 
pleasure,  I  read  all  of  Irving  except  the 
formidable  seven-volume  life  of  Washing 
ton.  He  opened  a  new  world  to  me,  for 
he  made  England  real  and  he  was  the  first 
to  make  me  feel  the  charm  of  Moorish 

[21] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Spain.  He  was  also  the  first  American 
author  who  gave  me  a  sense  of  a  fine 
literary  style.  A  boy  reads  for  matter, 
not  for  style,  and  it  proves  Irving's  great 
qualities  that  he  was  able  to  impress  a 
young  reader  with  the  charm  of  his  style. 

Irving  was  the  first  to  demonstrate  to 
Europe  that  in  this  new  country  had  sprung 
up  a  genuine  national  literature.  Scott, 
Byron  and  other  competent  critics  declared 
that  Irving's  work  was  worthy  of  a  place 
beside  the  best  work  of  English  authors. 
Many  critics  even  attributed  to  Scott  the 
authorship  of  The  Sketch  Eooky  which  first 
appeared  with  Irving's  identity  concealed 
under  the  pen  name  of  Geoffrey  Crayon. 
Yet  all  admitted  that  here  was  a  new  note 
in  literature  —  a  note  of  simple,  unstrained 
pathos,  of  keen  sympathy  with  grief  and 
suffering,  of  tenderness  that  is  almost  femi 
nine  in  its  intuition  and  charm,  and  of 
humor  that  has  in  it  no  malice  and  no  sting. 

Irving,  who  was  born  in  1783  and  died 
in  1859,  came  °f  good  Scotch  and  English 
stock.  He  derived  his  fancy  and  his 
literary  tastes  from  his  mother,  the  grand 
daughter  of  an  English  curate.  From  his 
tenth  year  he  devoured  books,  having  an 
especial  liking  for  travel,  fiction  and  poetry. 

[22] 


WASHINGTON  IRVING 

AT  THE  AGE  OF  TWENTY-SEVEN 

AN  ENGRAVING  FROM  THE  ORIGINAL  PICTURE 

BY  JARVIS 


THE  CHARM  OF  WASHINGTON  IRVING 

He  did  not  go  to  college,  but  he  enjoyed 
thorough  legal  training,  although  he  never 
practiced  his  profession.  He  was  singu 
larly  fortunate  in  the  possession  of  means, 
so  that  when  he  was  threatened  with  con 
sumption  he  was  able  to  take  a  European 
tour,  which,  in  the  opening  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  was  very  expensive. 
In  Rome  he  became  an  ardent  friend  of 
Washington  Allston,  the  artist,  and  in 
Paris  and  London  he  formed  many  friend 
ships  with  famous  men  and  women.  On 
his  return  to  this  country,  in  1806,  he  began 
to  devote  himself  to  literature.  Three 
years  later  he  brought  out  Knickerbocker's 
History  of  New  Tork>  which  made  a  great 
hit. 

The  death  of  Matilda  Hoffman,  the  girl 
he  loved  and  was  to  marry,  proved  a  great 
shock,  but  he  rallied  after  several  months 
and  devoted  himself  to  society  and  writing. 
In  1815  he  decided  to  go  to  Europe  to  see 
his  brother  Peter,  but  he  remained  for 
seventeen  years,  spending  most  of  the  time 
in  travel.  He  met  all  the  great  person 
ages  of  London  and  he  was  entertained  at 
Abbottsford  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  of  whom 
he  has  given  the  best  pi&ure  in  all  liter 
ature.  In  1819  appeared  'The  Sketch  Book, 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

which  established  Irving's  reputation  as  an 
essayist.  To  Irving's  great  surprise,  it 
had  as  notable  a  success  in  London  as  in 
New  York,  and  it  opened  all  doors  to  the 
handsome  young  American.  Then  fol 
lowed  in  rapid  succession  Bracebridge  Hally 
a  volume  of  sketches  of  English  country 
life;  Tales  of  a  traveler,  Life  of  Columbus, 
The  Conquest  of  Granada  and  'The  Albam- 
bra.  Irving  was  the  first  to  bring  out  the 
romance  of  the  Moorish  conquest  of  Spain, 
and  The  Alhambra  has  been  a  classic  for 
three-quarters  of  a  century. 

It  was  one  of  the  bits  of  good  fortune 
that  are  strung  along  the  thread  of  Irving's 
life  that  he  should  have  secured  a  patron 
in  old  John  Jacob  Astor.  For  this  founder 
of  one  of  the  greatest  American  fortunes 
Irving  wrote  Astoria^  the  record  of  an 
unsuccessful  attempt  to  found  a  fur-trading 
post  on  the  far  Pacific,  and  the  Adventures 
of  Captain  Bonneville,  written  from  the 
talk  of  an  old  fur-trader  and  adventurer. 
Irving  also  wrote  the  lives  of  Washington 
and  Mohammed,  and  he  gathered  material 
for  a  history  of  Mexico,  but  generously 
abandoned  the  project  when  he  learned 
that  his  friend  Prescott  had  decided  to 
write  of  the  conquest  by  Cortez.  Irving 


THE  CHARM  OF  WASHINGTON  IRVING 

filled  several  diplomatic  posts,  the  most 
noteworthy  being  that  of  American  Min 
ister  to  Spain  from  1842  to  1846.  He  had 
a  long  and  happy  life,  filled  with  work  that 
he  loved  and  with  friendships  that  served 
to  help  him  forget  his  lifelong  sorrow. 

To  one  who  has  not  read  Irving  the  best 
thing  to  take  up  first  is  'The  Sketch  Book. 
This  volume  includes,  besides  a  number  of 
the  most  delightful  essays  and  tales,  two 
of  his  best  short  stories,  Rip  Van  Winkle 
and  'The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  either  of 
which  would  have  made  the  reputation  of 
any  American  writer.  Rip  Van  Winkle 
was  made  familiar  to  every  child  in  this 
country,  thirty  years  ago,  by  Joe  Jeffer 
son's  remarkable  performance  of  the  play, 
which  he  developed  from  the  story.  The 
other  story  is  not  so  well  known,  but  the 
picture  of  the  headless  horseman  pursuing 
the  lean  and  terrified  Ichabod  Crane  is  one 
which  no  reader  will  ever  forget.  In  his 
Sketch  Book  Irving  gave  reminiscences  of  his 
early  life,  as  well  as  many  sketches  of  travel. 
In  its  style  it  reminds  one  of  Addison, 
with  a  touch  of  warmth  that  the  writer  of 
'The  Spectator  seldom  puts  into  his  work. 
The  chapters,  which  range  from  a  sketch 
of  the  long  ocean  voyage  to  Europe  to 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

papers  on  Christmas  and  Stratford-on-Avony 
all  breathe  a  spirit  of  mellow  culture  that 
is  rare  in  these  strenuous  days.  Irving,  by 
his  reading,  his  travels  and  his  social  inter 
course,  developed  a  style  that  is  well-nigh 
perfect  in  its  limpid  clearness,  its  varied 
charm  and  its  literary  quality.  The  man 
himself  impresses  one  as  finer  and  richer 
than  anything  which  may  be  found  in  his 
books. 

The  other  books  which  anyone  wishing 
to  know  the  real  Irving  should  read  are 
Bracebridge  Halt,  tfhe  Alhambra  and  Knick 
erbocker's  History  of  New  York.  In  the 
first  we  get  a  series  of  superb  pictures  of 
life  in  one  of  the  old  baronial  halls  of 
England.  In  The  Alhambra  Irving  has 
not  only  given  splendid  pen  pictures  of 
the  finest  remains  of  the  Moorish  conquest 
of  Spain,  but  he  has  told  many  legends 
and  stories  that  are  full  of  charm.  The 
History  of  New  Tork  is  the  best  piece  of 
sustained  humor  that  has  yet  been  pro 
duced  in  this  country.  Some  descendants 
of  the  old  Dutch  Governors  of  New 
Amsterdam  have  tried  to  show  that  Irving 
has  grossly  maligned  these  worthies,  but 
through  the  air  of  convincing  narration 
which  Irving  adopted  we  may  see  gleams 

[26] 


THE  CHARM  OF  WASHINGTON  IRVING 

of  fun  emerging.     It  is  rich  in  spontaneous 
humor  and  free  from  malice. 

It  is  well  for  us  in  these  days  of  business 
hustle  and  social  activity  to  read  Irving, 
for  he  acts  on  the  mind  like  a  sedative. 
His  style  exhales  the  aroma  of  a  fine  old 
leisure  that  has  become  one  of  the  lost 
American  arts.  He  is  always  unhurried, 
always  master  of  his  materials,  ever  charm 
ing,  never  dull  or  prosy.  In  a  word,  his 
best  works  are  the  most  agreeable  com 
panions,  which  entertain  while  they  in 
struct,  and  which  never  leave  upon  the 
mental  palate  any  of  the  evil  taste  of  the 
more  highly  seasoned  literature  of  our  day. 
Blessed  is  the  reader  who  can  relish  Irving, 
for  he  will  always  have  an  unfailing 
resource  in  time  of  trouble  or  depression. 


ART  OF 

EDGAR  ALLEN 

POE 

WORK  OF  THE  FINEST  SHORT  -  STORY 
WRITER  IN  AMERICA  —  His  POEMS  AND 
TALES  TRANSLATED  INTO  MANY  LAN 
GUAGES. 

THE  ordinary  rules  in  classifying  writers 
do  not  apply  to  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
Of  all  American  writers  he  has  probably 
the  widest  international  fame.  Far  more 
French  than  American  in  his  genius,  he 
was  closer  akin  to  Alfred  de  Musset  or 
Guy  de  Maupassant  than  any  English 
short-story  writer.  His  was  that  pre 
cision  in  style  and  that  dramatic  force  in 
plot  which  lends  itself  readily  to  trans 
lation  into  French.  In  an  age  when  the 
writer  was  fond  of  asserting  his  presence, 
Poe  preserved  an  attitude  of  aloofness  that 
rivals  that  of  Maupassant  or  Turgenieff. 
All  his  genius  is  devoted  to  producing 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

FROM  A  DAGUERREOTYPE  MADE  AT  RICHMOND 
BY  PRATT 


ART  OF  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

certain  dramatic  effects  and  in  this  he 
succeeds  by  the  use  of  words  and  pictures 
which  fairly  hypnotize  the  reader.  It 
never  occurs  to  one  to  criticize  any  of 
Poe's  short  stories  or  poems  while  reading 
it.  In  fact,  once  under  the  spell  of  this 
spiritual  necromancer,  the  reader  becomes 
a  captive  and  is  borne  swiftly  to  the  climax 
of  tale  or  poem. 

Poe  had  the  greatest  genius  for  literary 
form  of  any  American  writer.  In  his 
poems,  as  well  as  in  his  short  stories,  he 
labored  so  carefully  to  perfect  his  style, 
to  secure  the  fitting  word,  that  his  fame 
was  secure  long  before  his  death.  In  the 
final  accounting  of  literary  genius,  say  a 
hundred  years  after  a  writer's  birth,  form 
is  the  thing  which  assures  permanent  fame. 
Of  course,  high  literary  form  presupposes 
thought  or  imagination  behind  it;  but  the 
best  thought,  cast  in  awkward  or  slovenly 
language,  is  not  literature. 

Poe  is  known  as  the  writer  of  some  of 
the  most  perfectly  conceived  and  highly 
finished  short  stories  in  the  language,  as 
well  as  the  author  of  a  number  of  poems 
that  are  unique  because  of  their  melody 
and  their  haunting  charm.  In  both  de 
partments  of  American  literature  he  was 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

a  pioneer.  He  first  developed  what  has 
come  to  be  known  as  the  detedtive  story, 
working  out  all  the  details  with  a  subtle 
originality  that  has  never  been  sur 
passed.  He  also  was  the  first  to  make  real 
and  convincing  the  mystery  tale,  drawn 
from  science,  which  Jules  Verne  later  car 
ried  to  such  high  success.  Poe  had 
enormous  patience  in  gathering  scientific 
data  for  such  work,  and  his  analytic  mind 
took  keen  satisfaction  in  deductions  which 
made  clear  and  plain  many  bewildering 
mysteries.  Poe  also  developed  to  the 
highest  degree  the  cryptogram  in  such  tales 
as  ^he  Gold  Bug,  setting  a  standard  which 
no  disciple  has  ever  surpassed.  And  yet 
in  all  his  work  there  is  an  absence  of  the 
man  behind  the  artist,  or,  if  he  reveals 
himself  at  all,  his  personality  is  not 
pleasant. 

It  is  the  literary  artist,  not  the  man, 
who  interests  the  reader  in  all  Poe's  work, 
whether  in  prose  or  in  verse.  As  a  poet 
he  had  natural  command  of  melodious 
language,  which  has  been  surpassed  in  our 
day  only  by  Swinburne,  while  his  concep 
tions  were  so  strange  and  unreal  that  they 
stamp  themselves  ineffaceably  on  the 
reader's  mind.  Poe's  poetical  genius 


ART  OF  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

delighted  in  pictures  of  woe;  it  moved 
with  the  greatest  freedom  when  depicting 
blighted  love  and  ruined  lives.  It  was 
Byronic  in  its  view  of  life,  but  it  bore  no 
trace  of  the  hard  cynicism  of  Don  Juan. 
Even  The  Raven,  which  is  Poe's  master 
piece,  does  not  impress  one  as  cynical. 
The  Bells  is  a  superb  performance  in  the 
melody  of  words,  while  many  of  the  shorter 
poems,  notably  those  scattered  through  his 
short  stories,  are  simply  studies  in  words, 
as  purely  sensuous  in  their  appeal  to  the 
ear  as  the  music  of  Strauss.  No  thought 
can  be  discovered  in  these  poems;  they  are 
merely  variations  on  life  and  its  lost  illu 
sions,  in  which  Poe  uses  words  instead  of 
musical  notes.  Supreme  melody  atones 
for  lack  of  thought  or  any  real  emotion. 
As  far  as  genuine  human  feeling  is  con 
cerned,  Browning's  Pippa  Passes  has  more 
of  real  life  in  it  than  all  of  Poe's  poems. 

In  common  with  the  careers  of  other 
men  of  literary  genius,  Poe's  life  was 
uneventful.  He  came  of  a  family  of  actors, 
but  when  only  two  years  of  age  he  was  left 
an  orphan  and  was  adopted  by  Mrs.  John 
Allan  of  Richmond.  The  family  soon 
afterward  went  to  London,  and  Edgar  was 
sent  to  a  school  at  Stoke  Newington,  near 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

London,  which  he  described  in  his  story, 
William  Wilson.  Poe  appears  to  have 
been  a  highly  imaginative  boy,  with  a  keen 
taste  for  literature,  but  with  none  of  the 
usual  boy's  pleasure  in  rough  sports.  He 
read  widely  and  gained  his  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  the  Bible  from  regular  attendance 
at  church  and  other  religious  functions 
with  his  foster  mother.  Allan,  however, 
had  a  materialistic  bent,  and  from  books 
in  his  library  Poe's  natural  inclination  in 
the  same  direction  was  probably  strength 
ened.  Allan,  who  was  a  prosperous  mer 
chant,  never  liked  the  boy,  and  when  Poe 
reached  the  proper  age  he  had  the  lad  sent 
to  the  University  of  Virginia. 

As  a  student  Poe  excelled  in  literary 
studies,  but  he  gambled  and  drank,  and 
Allan  soon  refused  to  pay  his  debts. 
Thereupon  Poe  arranged  to  work  his  way 
to  England,  where  he  hoped  to  make  his 
living  by  his  pen.  He  was  disappointed, 
but  visited  Paris  and  then  returned  to  this 
country.  In  these  years  he  constantly 
practiced  writing  verse,  and  in  1827  he 
issued  a  first  volume  of  poems  through  a 
Boston  publisher,  entitled  'Tamerlane,  but 
it  excited  no  comment.  He  enlisted  in  the 
army  and  served  two  years,  but  his  foster 

[32] 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE'S  COTTAGE,  FORDHAM 
AFTER  A  DRAWING  BY  MIE  PATE 


ART  OF  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

mother,  learning  of  his  occupation,  induced 
her  husband  to  secure  his  discharge. 
Allan  was  making  arrangements  to  have 
Poe  enter  West  Point  when  his  wife  died. 
With  her  ended  all  Poe's  hopes  of  any 
assistance  from  Allan.  Poe  was  devoted 
to  literary  work  while  preparing  to  enter 
the  academy  and  issued  another  book  of 
youthful  verse,  Al  Aaraafy  'Tamerlane  and 
Minor  Poems. 

By  temperament  and  habit  Poe  was 
unsuited  to  the  military  life  and  he  spent 
only  one  year  at  West  Point.  When  he 
came  out  he  devoted  himself  to  newspaper 
work,  writing  many  of  his  best  tales  and 
poems  for  the  newspaper  or  magazine 
with  which  he  happened  to  be  associated. 
His  life  from  this  time  until  his  sudden 
death  in  Baltimore  was  marked  by  many 
vicissitudes.  Although  he  worked  hard 
he  received  such  poor  pay  for  his  services 
that  he  was  always  in  debt.  Had  he  lived 
in  these  days  he  would  have  commanded 
a  princely  revenue  from  rival  magazines, 
which  would  have  bid  against  one  another 
for  his  tales  and  poems.  As  it  was,  he  was 
unable  to  provide  ordinary  comforts  for 
the  girl  wife  whom  he  loved  devotedly. 
His  one  weakness  was  a  tendency  to  drink. 

[33] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

One  glass  of  wine  or  hard  cider  was  suffi 
cient  to  start  him  on  a  debauch  that  fre 
quently  cost  him  regular  employment.  It 
was  during  one  of  these  drinking  periods 
that  he  was  seized  by  unscrupulous  poli 
ticians  in  Baltimore  and  taken  from  one 
precinct  to  another  to  vote  for  their  ticket. 
Exposure  and  bad  liquor  broke  down  Poe's 
enfeebled  frame  and  his  system  could  not 
rally  from  the  shock.  Poe's  fame  was 
clouded  for  years  by  exaggerated  stories  of 
his  drinking  habits.  The  truth  is  that  he 
did  an  enormous  amount  of  the  best 
literary  work,  and  that,  considering  his 
imagination  and  his  lack  of  success,  he 
indulged  in  drink  less  than  most  men  of 
his  temperament. 

In  considering  the  best  things  among 
Poe's  many  prose  tales  it  is  difficult  to  fix 
on  those  stories  which  are  best  worth  read 
ing,  so  much  depends  upon  the  taste  of 
the  reader.  The  finest  thing  in  the  domain 
of  sheer  horror  is  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,  perhaps  the  most  finished  and  con 
sistent  of  all  Poe's  prose  work.  It  is  a 
study  in  premature  burial,  and  in  all  fiction 
there  is  nothing  more  thrilling  than  the 
sounds  of  the  hollow  reverberation  of  the 
doors  of  the  tomb  of  the  Lady  Madeline, 

[34] 


ART  OF  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

while  the  narrator  is  reading  the  old 
chronicle  of  the  champion  Ethelred,  and 
of  the  final  appearance  of  the  enshrouded 
figure  at  the  door  of  the  brother's  chamber. 
Next  to  this  I  would  place  The  Cask  of 
Amontillado,  a  case  of  a  jealous  husband's 
revenge,  which  is  wrought  out  to  its  ter 
rible  end  without  a  flaw. 

Among  mysteries  of  crime  the  first  place 
must  be  given  to  The  Murders  in  the  Rue 
Morgue,  a  tale  that  is  perfect  until  the 
interest  is  abruptly  ended  by  the  discovery 
that  the  murderer  is  not  a  human  being. 
The  best  tale  dealing  with  a  cryptogram 
is  The  Gold  Bug,  the  most  popular  of  all 
Poe's  work,  while  stories  which  were  the 
forerunners  of  all  the  Jules  Verne  type  of 
romances  are  A  Descent  Into  the  Maelstrom 
and  The  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle.  Both 
these  are  tales  of  horror  dealing  with  the 
great  maelstrom  that  was  once  popularly 
supposed  to  be  located  at  the  poles,  through 
which  the  waters  of  the  ocean  rushed. 

Criticism  is  powerless  before  Poe's  best 
poems,  as  it  is  before  the  melodies  of  the 
great  composers.  The  evident  effort  of 
the  poet  was  to  appeal  so  thoroughly  to 
the  ear  that  the  mind  would  be  satisfied 
with  the  sheer  melody.  This  is  the  case 

[35] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 


with  The  Raven,  ^he  Bells,  To  One  in 
Paradise,  Annabel  Lee  and  Ulalume.  They 
are  simply  variations  in  melody,  executed 
by  one  of  the  great  masters  of  the  music 
of  words.  Poe  wrought  at  these  and  other 
poems  all  his  life,  changing  a  word  here  or 
a  bit  of  punctuation  there,  and  all  his 
changes  were  in  the  line  of  greater  melody. 
Language  under  his  hand  became  plastic, 
and  he  worked  miracles  in  rhythm  and 
rhyme. 

It  is  difficult  to  make  any  extract  from 
Poe's  poems  without  injuring  the  context, 
but  one  may  get  an  idea  of  the  melody  of 
his  verse  from  this  stanza  from  AnnabelLee: 

For  the  moon  never  beams  without  bringing  me  dreams 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee; 
And  the  stars  never  rise  but  I  see  the  bright  eyes 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee; 
And  so,  all  the  night-tide,  I  lie  down  by  the  side 
Of  my  darling,  my  darling,  my  life  and  my  bride, 

In  her  sepulchre  there  by  the  sea  — 

In  her  tomb  by  the  sounding  sea. 


[36 


HAWTHORNE'S 

SOMBER  PURITAN 

ROMANCES 

"THE  SCARLET  LETTER,"  "THE  HOUSE 
OF  THE  SEVEN  GABLES"  AND  " MOSSES 
FROM  AN  OLD  MANSE"  —  ART  IN  "THE 
MARBLE  FAUN." 

Two  of  the  foremost  American  critics, 
William  Dean  Ho  wells  and  Professor 
William  Lyon  Phelps,  unite  in  declaring 
that  Hawthorne  was  the  greatest  literary 
artist  this  country  has  known,  and  that 
his  Scarlet  Letter  is  the  finest  novel  in 
American  literature.  Yet  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  those  who  follow  eagerly  the  best 
sellers  of  Chambers  and  McCutcheon  have 
never  read  any  of  Hawthorne's  exquisite 
tales  of  Puritan  New  England. 

Of  all  American  authors,  Hawthorne  has 
been  my  favorite  for  many  years,  since  as 
a  boy  of  sixteen  I  discovered  his  Mosses 
From  an  Old  Manse,  and  read  again  and 

[371 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

again  those  tales  of  Puritan  New  England 
until  something  of  their  beauty  and  their 
elusive  charm  passed  into  my  mind.  In 
my  estimation  no  other  author  who  has 
used  the  English  language  possesses  a  style 
that  will  compare  with  Hawthorne's,  or 
has  any  other  his  power  of  investing  ordi 
nary  life  with  the  mingled  terror  and 
charm  of  the  supernatural.  In  sheer  force 
of  imagination  he  surpasses  all  his  contem 
poraries,  and  when  one  compares  his  tales 
of  witchcraft  with  the  work  of  Hoffman 
and  other  German  apostles  of  mysticism, 
his  stories  make  theirs  appear  thin  and 
amateurish. 

Endowed  with  one  of  the  vivid  creative 
minds,  Hawthorne's  rare  gifts  have  failed 
to  impress  many  critics,  who,  like  Henry 
James,  in  that  unhappy  sketch  in  which 
he  revealed  his  own  limitations,  bewailed 
the  fact  that  the  author  of  The  Scarlet 
Letter  had  no  real  historical  background 
for  his  tales.  Fine  literary  artificer  as  he 
is,  I  would  give  all  of  Henry  James*  work 
for  one  of  Hawthorne's  tales  like  Roger 
Malvin's  Burial  or  Toung  Goodman  Brown. 
No  one  has  written  any  adequate  estimate 
of  Hawthorne,  because  very  few  critics 
have  any  idea  of  the  service  to  American 

[38] 


HAWTHORNE'S  SOMBER  ROMANCES 

literature  rendered  by  this  shy  man  of 
genius,  who  at  the  same  time  was  a  pretty 
hard-headed,  sensible  man  of  affairs. 

Although  his  Scarlet  Letter  has  been 
widely  read,  much  of  Hawthorne's  best 
work  has  been  neglected  because  few  peo 
ple  appreciate  the  peculiar  charm  of  his 
tales  and  sketches.  His  imagination  is  so 
fine,  his  humor  so  quiet,  his  cast  of  mind 
so  unusual  that  unless  one  has  a  strong 
taste  for  solitude  and  for  the  study  of  the 
spiritual,  it  is  difficult  to  get  into  close 
touch  with  Hawthorne  and  to  feel  the 
singular  power  and  lawlessness  of  his 
genius.  In  all  literature  no  one,  in  my 
judgment,  has  approached  him  in  the 
uncanny  power  of  moving  with  ease  and 
sureness  in  that  spiritual  world  that  seems 
to  lie  so  close  to  reality  and  yet  which  the 
average  author  cannot  make  us  see  clearly. 

In  this  intangible  world,  Hawthorne 
seems  to  move  as  though  he  were  an  actual 
resident.  He  passes  in  a  moment  from 
the  hard,  practical  New  England  life  to 
that  borderland  of  witchcraft  which  terri 
fied  the  souls  of  the  superstitious  and  led 
to  the  unspeakable  horrors  of  the  Salem 
trials  —  that  hysteria  of  morbid  minds 
which  was  as  cruel  and  vile  as  the  cold 

[39] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

savagery  of  the  French  women  who 
knitted  in  the  shadow  of  the  Paris  guillo 
tine  and  waited  every  day  for  the  thrill 
that  tingled  through  their  overwrought 
nerves  when  one  more  head  dropped  into 
the  bloody  basket.  The  historian's  account 
of  the  Salem  witchcraft  trials  is  poor  and 
colorless  compared  with  Hawthorne's  awful 
picture  of  the  young  New  England  man 
who  stepped  from  his  warm  fireside  into 
the  devilish  riot  of  the  foul-minded  witches 
who  cackled  obscene  jests  and  blasphemed 
all  holy  things  from  pure  lust  of  wickedness. 

Hawthorne's  work  cannot  be  appre 
ciated  without  some  knowledge  of  his 
curious  early  life  and  its  strange  environ 
ment  that  forced  a  shy,  scholarly  boy  into 
the  habits  of  a  recluse.  The  novelist 
inherited  his  stalwart  frame  and  his  whole 
some  common  sense  from  his  seafaring 
ancestors;  his  glorious  imagination  and  all 
his  morbid  traits  came  straight  from  his 
mother.  When  the  boy  was  four  years 
old  he  lost  his  father,  while  his  mother, 
smarting  under  the  loss  of  her  husband, 
became  a  bitter  recluse. 

Upon  sound  and  wholesome  children  the 
influence  of  a  mother  who  never  took  her 
meals  with  her  children,  and  who  some- 

[40] 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 
AT  THE  AGE  OF  THIRTY-SIX 

ETCHED  BY  S.  A.  SCHOFF  FROM  A  PAINTING  MADE 
IN  1840  BY  CHARLES  OSGOOD 


HAWTHORNE'S  SOMBER  ROMANCES 

times  spent  days  of  solitude  in  her  cham 
ber,  could  not  fail  to  be  evil.  How  much 
greater  was  this  influence  when  Nathaniel, 
a  strangely  shy  and  thoughtful  child,  was 
driven  to  solitude  in  his  turn  and  to  lose 
himself  in  the  great  world  of  books.  His 
favorite  books  in  those  days  were  Pilgrim's 
Progress  and  The  Faerie  Queene.  From 
these  and  the  King  James  Bible  he  drew 
that  marvelous  style  which  has  been  the 
despair  of  all  other  writers.  When  four 
teen  years  old  his  mother  moved  from 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  where  the  boy  was 
born,  to  a  little  village  near  Lake  Sebago, 
in  the  Maine  woods,  where  she  owned 
some  land.  There  the  boy  led  a  very 
unhealthy  life,  carrying  his  love  of  solitude 
to  the  dangerous  point  of  never  going  out 
upon  the  road  by  daylight,  lest  he  should 
meet  people,  and  frequently  skating  alone 
on  the  somber  lake  until  midnight  or  after. 
Physically  in  those  months  Hawthorne 
became  a  model  of  manly  strength  and 
beauty,  but  mentally  he  received  a  twist 
toward  the  morbid,  from  which  he  never 
recovered.  Also  he  seemed  ever  after  to 
be  curiously  detached  from  real  life,  to 
look  on  the  most  vital  things  with  the 
eyes  of  a  mere  uninterested  observer. 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

This  was  probably  seen  in  greatest  measure 
in  the  early  days  of  the  Civil  War,  when 
Hawthorne  could  feel  no  stirrings  of 
patriotism,  but  regarded  the  tremendous 
struggle  for  national  life  and  honor  as  a 
deplorable  mistake,  born  of  political  feuds 
and  hatreds.  There  was  something  wrong 
with  a  man  who  could,  as  George  William 
Curtis  so  well  said,  "write  like  a  disem 
bodied  intelligence  of  events  with  which 
his  neighbors'  hearts  were  quivering." 

Hawthorne  went  to  Bowdoin  College  at 
seventeen,  and  had  as  chums  Longfellow, 
Franklin  Pierce,  afterward  President,  and 
Horatio  Bridge.  He  gained  no  distinction 
at  college,  and  after  graduation  returned 
to  Salem,  where  his  mother  had  established 
her  home.  For  twenty  years  in  Salem  he 
wrought  at  literature,  writing  the  stories 
which  were  gathered  in  Mosses  From  an 
Old  Manse  and  Twice-Told  Tales.  Few 
knew  him,  and  he  said  bitterly  after  years 
of  work  that  he  still  remained  the  least 
known  of  any  American  man  of  letters. 
He  married  Sophia  Peabody,  a  woman  of 
great  purity  of  mind  and  spiritual  fervor. 
She  proved  an  enormous  stimulus  and  com 
fort  to  the  lonely,  sensitive  man,  and  helped 
him  to  find  himself. 

[42] 


HAWTHORNE'S  SOMBER  ROMANCES 

After  serving  in  the  Custom-house  at 
Boston,  and  later  in  the  Salem  Custom 
house,  Hawthorne  made  his  first  literary 
hit  in  1849  witn  Tb*  ^carlet  Letter •,  the 
greatest  tragedy  of  a  guilty  soul  ever 
written.  He  followed  this  with  The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables,  The  Blithedale  Romance 
and  The  Marble  Faun.  These  sum  up  his 
best  work,  which  is  in  a  class  by  itself,  set 
apart  from  all  other  fiction  by  its  sense  of 
spiritual  power  working  out  the  problems 
of  remorse  of  soul  and  the  inevitable  atone 
ment  for  sin. 

The  reader  who  is  taking  up  Hawthorne 
for  the  first  time  would  do  well  to  begin 
with  some  of  the  short  stories  from  Mosses 
From  an  Old  Manse.  Perhaps  the  preface 
to  this  book  shows  Hawthorne's  style  at 
its  best.  Of  the  tales  take  Roger  Makings 
Burial,  The  Birthmark  and  Toung  Goodman 
Brown.  One  gives  the  somber  Puritan 
idea  of  the  terrible  expiation  of  sin  that 
must  be  made  by  everyone  in  this  world. 
In  this  tale  the  desertion  of  a  comrade  in 
the  wilderness  costs  a  man  the  life  of  his 
dearly  beloved  son,  and  the  boy  falls  by 
his  father's  hand  in  the  shadow  of  a  great 
rock  which  he  identifies  as  the  very  place 
that  witnessed  his  own  treachery  to  his 

[431 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

dying  comrade.     ¥he  Birthmark  illustrates 
the  foolish  passion  for  perfection  that  led 
an  artist  to  sacrifice  the  woman  he  loved 
in  order  to  free  her  face  from  a  minor 
blemish.     In  the  third  story  we  have  a 
powerful  picture  of  the  evil  influence  of 
witchcraft  upon  the  soul  of  the  Puritan. 
Goodman  Brown's  one  night  in  the  forest 
is  a  picture  that  no  reader  will  ever  forget. 
Of  all  Hawthorne's  romances,  The  Scarlet 
Letter  is  the  most  finished  and  satisfactory. 
It  is  a  full-length  study  of  the  spiritual 
influence  of  sin  upon  two  highly  sensitive 
natures   and   the   terrible  effects  of  hate 
upon  old  Roger  Chillingworth.     He  was 
the  husband  of  Hester,  who  fled  from  him 
for  love  of  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  the  elo 
quent  young  preacher.     In  New  England, 
where  the  guilty  couple  sought  a  refuge, 
the  woman  was  condemned  to  wear  the 
scarlet  letter  A,  a  symbol  of  her  shame, 
on  her  breast,  for  she  refused  to  divulge 
the  paternity  of  her  child.     No  one  except 
the  old  husband  knew  that  the  preacher 
was  her  lover  and  the  father  of  the  beau 
tiful  girl  who  is  at  once  her  mother's  daily 
torment  and  comfort.     Sad  but  sweet  are 
the  secret  meetings  of  Dimmesdale  and 
Hester,  but  the  little  child,  Pearl,  serves 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 
THIS  EXCELLENT  LIKENESS  is  FROM  AN  OIL  PAINTING 

BY  FRANCES  OSBORNE,  PAINTED  IN  1893  FROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS.    OWNED  BY  THE  ESSEX  INSTITUTE 


HAWTHORNE'S  SOMBER  ROMANCES 

by  her  innocent  questions  to  barb  the 
arrows  that  sting  the  soul  of  the  two  forlorn 
lovers.  The  final  scene,  in  which  the 
preacher  denounces  himself  and  his  sin,  is 
one  of  the  most  tremendous  in  all  literature, 
but  the  irony  of  fate  makes  his  devoted 
hearers  believe  he  has  lost  his  mind,  for 
they  cannot  associate  the  breaking  of  the 
moral  law  with  the  pure-minded  ascetic 
who  has  served  as  their  model  for  so  many 
years. 

"The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  is  the  very 
essence  of  mellow  romance.  The  illusion 
of  old  New  England  days  is  perfect,  and 
the  figure  of  Judge  Pyncheon,  a  hard 
hearted  but  sanctimonious  old  Puritan,  a 
devourer  of  widows  and  orphans,  whose 
voice  is  yet  loud  in  the  tabernacle,  is  the 
most  impressive  in  the  story.  All  the  little 
detail  of  Hepzibah's  shop  is  beautifully 
done,  and  pretty  Phoebe  is  one  of  the 
daintiest  maidens  in  fidion. 

Hawthorne's  'The  Marble  Faun  is  the 
only  romance  in  which  the  background  is 
rich  in  a  storied  past.  Into  it  he  has  put 
all  his  passion  for  the  things  in  Rome  that 
appealed  to  his  imagination,  but  these 
historic  buildings  and  the  magnificent 
works  of  art  that  he  describes  do  not  move 

[451 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

him  like  the  homely  things  of  New  Eng 
land  that  he  has  preserved  in  the  amber 
of  his  incomparable  style.  In  Donatello, 
the  faun,  Hawthorne  has  drawn  a  figure 
that,  seen  in  the  vivid  Roman  sunlight, 
appears  to  be  simply  a  light-hearted  young 
man,  but  in  a  moment,  shifted  to  the 
shadows  of  the  half-light,  he  is  a  wild 
creature  of  the  woods,  and  we  look  for  the 
faun's  ears  under  his  curly  hair.  It  is  a 
fine  conception,  wrought  with  all  the  skill 
of  a  great  artist  and  with  an  atmosphere  of 
mingled  mystery  and  expectation  that 
serves  to  bring  every  figure  into  bold  relief. 
Hawthorne  did  much  good  work  aside 
from  these  novels.  His  articles  on  English 
life,  gathered  under  the  title  Our  Old  Home, 
have  never  been  equaled  for  shrewd  insight 
and  descriptive  skill.  His  note-books, 
edited  by  his  widow,  are  filled  with  good 
things,  and  on  many  pages  one  sees  a 
sentence  which  has  served  as  the  germ  of 
a  story.  Hawthorne  also  wrote  some  of  the 
most  delightful  letters,  and  his  love  letters 
reveal  the  tender  heart  and  the  quick 
sympathies  of  the  man  who  seemed  so 
cold  to  mere  acquaintances.  No  author, 
in  my  opinion,  will  repay  careful  study  so 
richly  as  Hawthorne.  You  may  read  him 


HAWTHORNE'S  SOMBER  ROMANCES 

many  times,  yet  every  fresh  perusal  reveals 
new  beauties.  As  a  study  in  style  his 
books  excel  those  of  any  American  or 
English  author. 


[47] 


FENIMORE 

COOPERS  ORIGINAL 

WORK 

His  TALES  OF  THE  FOREST  AND  THE 
SEA  —  LEATHERSTOCKING  AND  LONG 
TOM  COFFIN  KNOWN  AROUND  THE 
WORLD. 

FENIMORE  COOPER  is  better  known 
abroad  than  any  other  American 
writer  except  Poe.  Perhaps  this  is  due 
in  great  measure  to  his  magnificent  descrip 
tions  of  wild  nature,  which  appeal  strongly 
to  readers  who  live  in  an  old  and  well- 
cultivated  country,  as  well  as  to  his  vivid 
pictures  of  the  North  American  Indian 
before  the  white  man's  vices  debased  and 
ruined  him.  Cooper's  field  was  his  own 
and  it  has  remained  his  exclusive  posses 
sion,  for  none  of  his  imitators  has  proved 
worthy  of  a  place  with  the  master.  The 
only  other  American  writer  who  has  util 
ized  his  knowledge  of  Indian  life  and 


*r- .    f?1'  f  /  '-*  rr 


J.  FENIMORE  COOPER 
ENGRAVED  FROM  THE  PAINTING  BY  C.  L.  ELLIOTT 


FENIMORE  COOPER'S  ORIGINAL  WORK 

character  is  the  historian  Parkman,  whose 
sketches  of  the  adventures  of  Pontiac  and 
other  chiefs  are  as  interesting  as  any  work 
of  fiction. 

Cooper  shares  with  Irving  and  Poe  the 
credit  of  making  American  literature  known 
to  Europe.  Washington  Irving  was  the 
pioneer  literary  man  in  this  country  whose 
work  was  recognized  as  the  equal  of  the 
work  of  any  European  writer.  After  him 
came  Poe,  whose  short  stories  and  poems 
were  received  with  far  greater  favor  in 
France  than  in  his  own  country.  Cooper 
probably  ranks  third,  because,  despite  his 
remarkable  creative  ability,  he  did  not 
possess  the  faculty  for  literary  style.  He 
wrote  carelessly,  and  much  of  his  best  work 
is  disfigured  by  a  prolix  style  that  injures 
one's  appreciation  of  his  stories.  Like 
Scott,  whom  he  resembles  in  many  ways, 
Cooper  was  so  intent  upon  his  tale  that  he 
neglected  the  manner  of  telling  it.  He 
wrote  as  he  talked,  simply,  fluently,  but 
with  no  heed  for  literary  expression,  and 
with  none  of  that  careful  revision  which 
would  have  omitted  many  redundant 
words  and  phrases.  Cooper  always  im 
presses  one  as  a  man  who  never  wrote 
himself  out.  He  always  had  a  large 

[49] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

reserve  of  knowledge  and  impressions  to 
draw  upon.  Breadth  of  conception,  ease 
in  writing  and  a  certain  joy  in  the  use  of 
his  great  creative  powers  —  these  are  the 
traits  that  give  much  of  its  vitality  to  all 
Coopers  best  work.  He  had  no  sense  of 
literary  artistry  as  Stevenson  had,  and  per 
haps  that  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  so  much 
more  of  his  work  will  endure  than  that 
of  the  greatest  stylist  of  the  last  century. 

Cooper  is  popularly  known  only  by  his 
Leaders  foe  king  tales,  yet  his  stories  of  the 
sea  are  as  true  to  nature,  as  full  of  fine 
characters  and  as  crowded  with  thrilling 
incidents  as  any  of  the  romances  that 
center  about  the  enchanted  borders  of  his 
favorite  Otsego  lake.  Long  Tom  Coffin, 
the  old  man-of-war's  man,  is  as  fine  a 
character  as  Leatherstocking,  and  the 
stories  that  record  his  adventures  are  clas 
sics  that  will  endure.  Cooper  had  received 
training  at  sea  and  he  knew  how  to  handle 
a  ship,  so  his  sea  stories  show  that  easy 
mastery  of  sails  and  spars  and  ropes  that 
makes  the  reader  captive  from  the  outset. 

In  the  same  way  Cooper's  knowledge  of 
woodcraft  and  of  the  ways  of  the  Indian 
and  the  white  hunter  and  trapper  makes 
one  accept  as  real  not  only  Leatherstock- 


FENIMORE  COOPER'S  ORIGINAL  WORK 

ing,  but  Uncas,  Chingachgook,  Hardheart, 
and  all  the  other  red  men  in  his  immortal 
romances.  Not  one  of  Cooper's  imitators, 
however,  equaled  him  in  giving  to  the  novel 
reader  that  sense  of  the  mystery  and  the 
ever-lurking  danger  that  attended  the 
white  hunter  in  the  great  woods  of  this 
country  when  the  Indian  tribes  were  a 
constant  menace  to  any  stranger.  There 
are  chapters  in  The  Deer  slayer  and  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans  that  move  with  the 
breathless  interest  of  Scott  at  his  best  in 
Ivanhoe  or  Quentin  Durward.  And  Coop 
er's  genius  is  the  more  remarkable  from 
the  fact  that  he  had  no  historical  back 
ground  to  lend  force  and  color  to  his  char 
acters.  All  he  had  was  this  great  trackless 
wilderness,  which  he  depicted  with  such 
power  as  to  make  Balzac  declare,  "If 
Cooper  had  succeeded  in  the  painting  of 
character  as  well  as  he  did  in  the  painting 
of  the  phenomena  of  nature  he  would 
have  uttered  the  last  word  of  our  art." 

Cooper  was  far  more  English  in  his 
character  and  mind  than  American,  but 
he  had  no  narrow  prejudices,  for  he  had 
traveled  widely  and  seen  much  of  life. 
His  early  training  in  the  navy  was  of  great 
benefit  when  he  came  to  write  of  the  sea, 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

and  his  life  for  years  on  the  shores  of 
Otsego  lake  gave  him  a  rare  chance  to 
study  the  primeval  wilderness  and  the 
Indian  as  he  existed  before  he  was  cor 
rupted  by  the  white  man's  vices.  It  has 
become  a  stock  subject  for  comment  among 
many  writers  that  Cooper  idealized  the 
Indian  in  such  types  as  Uncas,  but  any 
careful  reader  of  the  Leather  stocking  tales 
knows  that  Cooper's  Indians  are  not  only 
real  and  genuine,  but  they  are  as  true  to 
life  as  Natty  Bumpo. 

Cooper  showed  that  while  his  Indians 
always  remembered  a  favor,  they  never 
failed  to  revenge  an  injury,  although  they 
might  wait  years  for  this  satisfaction  of  an 
old  grudge.  They  are  never  "good" 
Indians  in  the  sense  of  being  converts  to 
Christianity  or  of  thinking  or  acting  like 
white  men.  After  years  of  association 
with  the  whites  they  remain  as  primitive 
savages  as  the  true  Chinese  today  remains 
a  consistent  pagan  after  a  lifetime  in  the 
service  of  an  American  family.  The  blood 
lust  is  easily  aroused  in  Cooper's  Indians, 
and  it  is  never  sated  without  the  scalp  of 
an  enemy. 

Cooper  came  of  the  best  English  Quaker 
stock,  mixed  on  his  mother's  side  with  a 


ONE  OF  THE  VIGNETTE  ENGRAVINGS  REPRODUCING 
THE  ILLUSTRATIONS  BY  F.  O.  C.  DARLEY, 
WHICH  ADORNED  THE  EARLY  EDITIONS 
OF  COOPER'S  WORKS 


FENIMORE  COOPER'S  ORIGINAL  WORK 

Swedish  strain,  also  Quaker.  Though  born 
in  New  Jersey,  he  was  taken  when  a  baby 
to  his  father's  estate  near  Otsego  lake,  in 
Central  New  York,  where  the  city  of 
Cooperstown  had  been  laid  out.  There 
he  spent  his  boyhood  in  a  wild  country 
over  which  Indian  bands  still  roamed,  and 
he  saw  much  of  Indian  life,  which  pro 
foundly  colored  his  imagination.  At  four 
teen  he  entered  Yale,  but  he  was  expelled 
in  his  junior  year  because  of  neglect  of  his 
studies.  Desiring  to  enter  naval  life,  he 
was  forced,  because  of  the  lack  of  a  naval 
academy,  to  spend  sixteen  months  in  the 
merchant  service  before  he  received  a 
midshipman's  commission.  After  three 
years  of  varied  experience  he  resigned  and 
took  up  farming  in  Westchester  county 
on  the  estate  of  his  wife.  There  he  began 
authorship  by  writing  a  novel,  to  see 
whether  he  could  not  tell  a  better  story 
than  one  which  he  had  been  reading  to  his 
wife.  His  first  attempt  was  a  failure,  as 
he  dealt  with  English  aristocratic  life,  but 
his  second  story,  The  Spy,  proved  to  be 
one  of  the  best  of  the  romances  of  the 
Revolutionary  War.  Its  success  gave 
Cooper  confidence,  and  he  turned  to  his 
recollections  of  Indian  life  and  produced 

[53] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

The  Pioneers,  one  of  the  Leatherstocking 
tales.  He  showed  his  versatility  by  writ 
ing  in  the  following  year  The  Pilot,  one  of 
the  finest  of  his  sea  stories.  From  this 
time,  1824,  until  1850,  the  year  before  he 
died,  Cooper  averaged  more  than  one 
novel  every  year. 

In  reading  Cooper  it  is  well  to  begin 
with  The  Deer  slayer  and  The  Last  of  the 
Mohicans,  and  to  follow  the  course  of 
Hawkeye  from  his  splendid  youth  in  the 
first  of  these  tales  down  through  The 
Pathfinder,  to  his  vigorous  old  age  in  The 
Pioneers  and  The  Prairie.  No  other  books 
in  any  language  give  one  so  fine  a  pano 
rama  of  savage  life  as  these  Leatherstock 
ing  tales.  Through  them  move  the  supple 
and  treacherous  Indians,  masters  of  wood 
craft  and  of  all  the  methods  of  savage 
warfare  that  is  as  picturesque  as  the  fight 
ing  of  the  Greeks  in  Homer's  great  epic, 
and  the  small  band  of  white  hunters  and 
trappers  led  by  Leatherstocking  himself, 
whose  bravery,  simplicity  and  mastery  of 
Indian  lore  were  reproduced  in  our  own> 
day  in  Kit  Carson  and" Buffalo  Bill "  Cod^.  ^ 

These  stories  are  full  of  thrilling  inciv 
dent,  of  pursuit  by  the  relentless  Indian^  ••. 
of  narrow  escapes  from  death  by  torture 

[54] 


FENIMORE  COOPER'S  ORIGINAL  WORK 

at  the  stake,  of  splendid  shooting  with  the 
old  long  squirrel  rifle  that  proved  so 
deadly  at  New  Orleans  to  Pakenham's 
veterans,  and  of  many  superb  descriptions 
of  the  great  forest  that  clothed  upper  New 
York  State  and  the  whole  country  that 
fringes  the  Great  Lakes  from  the  head  of 
the  St.  Lawrence  river  to  the  western 
border  of  Lake  Superior.  It  is  difficult  to 
conceive  of  this  now  densely  populated 
country  as  once  covered  by  unbroken 
forest,  but  thirty  years  ago  men  were  living 
in  Western  New  York  who  remembered 
as  boys  the  cutting  of  roads  through  the 
dense  timber  in  that  State  to  allow  their 
wagons  to  pass  on  the  way  to  the  Northern 
Reserve  of  Ohio. 

Cooper  knew  the  Adirondack  region  and 
its  lower  fringe  that  included  Otsego  lake, 
the  Glimmerglass  of  Leather  stocking^  as  a 
man  knows  his  own  hand.  Every  foot  of 
it  he  had  tramped  over;  he  had  camped 
by  its  beautiful  mountain  lakes  and  fished 
in  its  ice-cold  streams.  And  the  joy  of 
this  free,  savage  life  had  entered  into  his 
blood  so  that  he  could  picture  it  in  his 
stories  with  a  passionate  ardor  that  warms 
the  heart  of  the  reader.  In  these  days  of 
the  Boy  Scout  movement  and  the  revival 

issi 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

of  interest  in  life  in  the  open  air.  Cooper's 
Leather  stocking  stories  should  come  in  for 
careful  reading.  Any  healthy  boy  or  girl 
will  bless  you  for  making  known  these  tales 
of  Cooper's,  that  tell  of  the  golden  age  of 
adventure  in  the  pathless  woods,  when 
physical  strength,  courage,  coolness,  endu 
rance  and  skill  with  the  old  muzzle-loading 
rifle  were  pitted  against  Indian  craft  and 
the  instinct  for  following  the  trail  and 
divining  the  movements  of  an  enemy  at 
a  great  distance.  The  younger  generation 
can  never  hope  to  see  again  the  forest 
primeval,  but  the  next  thing  to  seeing  it 
with  one's  own  eyes  is  to  see  it  in  Cooper's 
word  pictures,  as  it  was  before  the  ax  of 
the  lumberman  laid  it  in  ruins. 

Of  Cooper's  sea  stories,  the  best  is  The 
Pilot,  which  tells  in  graphic  style  of  the 
exploits  of  John  Paul  Jones  in  English 
waters.  It  introduces  Long  Tom  Coffin, 
Cooper's  other  great  creation,  as  original 
as  Leatherstocking,  a  Yankee  sailor  who 
showed  the  same  qualities  at  sea  that  the 
hunter  revealed  in  the  forest.  This  tale 
demonstrated  Cooper's  command  of  the 
lore  of  the  sea,  which  he  afterward  proved 
in  such  fine  sea  stories  as  Wing  and  Wing 
and  Afloat  and  Ashore. 

[56] 


FENIMORE  COOPER'S  ORIGINAL  WORK 

Cooper  was  intensely  unpopular  during 
his  best  years  because  he  had  the  courage 
to  criticise  many  unlovely  traits  of  his 
countrymen.  The  Americans  whose  man 
ners  Dickens  and  Mrs.  Trollope  satirized 
had  a  wonderfully  thin  skin,  and  Cooper 
had  an  unfortunate  genius  for  irritating 
his  home  public.  He  was  lampooned  in 
the  newspapers,  and  he  promptly  brought 
libel  suits,  argued  the  cases  himself,  and 
invariably  recovered  damages.  Not  satis 
fied  with  this,  he  exploited  his  opinions  on 
many  subjects  in  his  novels,  with  the  result 
that  his  great  abilities  were  not  recognized 
until  after  his  death. 

The  controversies  which  embittered 
Cooper's  last  years  seem  almost  childish 
to  us  now.  Nothing  remains  but  the  real 
work  done  by  Cooper,  who  has  added  one 
supremely  fine  character  to  the  world's 
gallery  of  great  personages  in  fiction.  It 
is  to  his  credit  also  that  he  did  such  good 
work  when  he  was  pestered  by  malignant 
detractors.  To  have  created  Leather- 
stocking  is  a  passport  to  enduring  fame; 
yet  Cooper  added  to  this  typical  American 
backwoodsman  Long  Tom  Coffin,  the 
shrewd  Yankee  sailor,  and  a  long  line  of 
other  original  characters. 

[57] 


LONGFELLOW 

THE  POET  OF  THE 

HOUSEHOLD 

MORE  POPULAR  ABROAD  THAN  ANY 
OTHER  AMERICAN  WRITER  OF  VERSE  — 
His  STRONG  SENSE  OF  NATIONALITY. 

LONGFELLOW  cannot  be  classed  among 
the  world's  greatest  poets  —  with 
Shakespeare,  Browning,  Tennyson,  or  Vic 
tor  Hugo  —  but  he  is  probably  more 
widely  read  than  any  of  these  poets  of  the 
first  rank.  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson 
quotes  from  Professor  Grovesnor  of  Am- 
herst  College  an  anecdote  which  shows  the 
worldwide  popularity  of  the  author  of 
Evangeline  and  Hiawatha.  The  professor 
was  one  of  a  party  traveling  from  Constan 
tinople  to  Marseilles  when  the  talk  at  table 
turned  upon  poetry,  and  no  less  than  six 
persons  of  six  different  nationalities  re 
peated  poems  of  Longfellow  and  declared 
that  he  was  their  favorite  poet.  The 

[58] 


THE  POET  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

Russian  lady  who  started  the  discussion, 
aptly  ended  it  with  this  wise  remark: 
"Do  you  suppose  there  is  any  other  poet 
of  any  country,  living  or  dead,  from  whom 
so  many  of  us  could  have  quoted?  Not 
one.  Not  even  Shakespeare,  or  Victor 
Hugo,  or  Homer." 

Higginson  follows  this  with  figures  from 
the  British  Museum  catalogue  of  1901, 
which  gives  under  each  author's  name  the 
record  of  every  memoir,  criticism,  parody 
or  translation  of  his  works.  In  this  test 
Longfellow  stands  first  among  American 
poets  with  357  titles  and  the  others  follow 
in  this  order:  Emerson  (158),  Holmes 
(135),  Lowell  (114),  Whittier  (104),  Poe 
(103)  and  Whitman  (64).  Again  in  the 
first  balloting  by  the  hundred  judges  for 
candidates  for  the  new  Hall  of  Fame  in 
the  New  York  University,  only  39  names 
secured  a  majority  of  these,  and  Long 
fellow  was  tenth  in  rank,  the  only  American 
man  of  letters  who  exceeded  him  in  votes 
being  Emerson.  These  are  all  definite 
proofs  of  Longfellow's  worldwide  popu 
larity. 

Since  Poe,  in  jealous  rage  over  the 
superior  popularity  of  Longfellow's  work, 
lampooned  his  poems  and  derided  his 

[59] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

poetic  ability,  many  critics  have  had  their 
fling  at  the  New  England  bard.  It  has 
been  said  that  he  had  no  genuine  poetic 
inspiration;  that  many  of  his  most  popular 
poems  are  purely  ethical  and  have  no  claim 
to  rank  as  true  poetry;  that  he  was  an 
imitator  of  many  foreign  poets  and  at  best 
simply  a  wonderfully  skilful  adapter  of 
other  men's  thoughts.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all 
these  attacks,  which  Longfellow  never 
deigned  to  notice,  his  poems  continued  to 
be  translated  into  foreign  languages,  while 
edition  after  edition  was  demanded  in 
English-speaking  countries.  An  editor  of 
one  of  the  great  London  weekly  papers 
said  not  many  years  ago:  "A  stranger 
can  hardly  have  an  idea  how  familiar 
many  of  our  working  people,  especially 
women,  are  with  Longfellow.  Thousands 
can  repeat  some  of  his  poems  who  have 
never  read  a  line  of  Tennyson  and  prob 
ably  never  heard  of  Browning."  And  the 
visitor  to  Westminster  Abbey  is  impressed 
by  the  fact  that  in  Poet's  Corner,  on  a 
bracket  near  the  tomb  of  Chaucer  and 
between  the  memorials  to  Cowley  and 
Dryden,  stands  a  fine  marble  bust  of  Long 
fellow,  the  gift  of  English  and  American 
admirers.  Lowell,  then  our  minister  to 

[60] 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW 

IN  1859 
FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  BRADY 


THE  POET  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

England,  was  the  chief  speaker  at  the 
unveiling  of  this  bust  and  in  eloquent 
words,  paid  his  tribute  to  Longfellow,  the 
poet  and  the  man. 

Longfellow  came  of  good  old  Yorkshire 
stock  and  he  could  trace  his  descent  to 
four  of  the  Mayflower  pilgrims.  He  was 
born  in  Portland,  Maine,  in  1807,  and  he 
learned  his  letters  at  the  early  age  of 
three.  At  thirteen,  while  a  student  in  the 
Portland  Academy,  he  composed  his  first 
poem,  Venice^  an  Italian  Song,  and  a  little 
later  his  first  verses  appeared  in  print  in 
the  local  newspaper.  The  youthful  poet 
chose  an  American  theme,  The  Battle  of 
Lowell's  Pondy  and  the  verse  would  do 
credit  to  a  maturer  hand.  Longfellow 
went  to  Bowdoin  College,  where  he  had 
Hawthorne  for  a  classmate.  There,  while 
he  did  not  excel  in  studies,  he  was  an 
omnivorous  reader  and  he  showed  keen 
interest  in  poetry  and  in  books  about  the 
American  Indian.  One  of  his  college  exer 
cises  was  a  plea  for  the  Indians,  while  his 
commencement  oration  was  on  Our  Native 
Writers.  Some  critics  have  seen  in  this 
youthful  appeal  for  the  Red  Man  the 
germ  of  Hiawatha.  During  his  college 
course  Longfellow  contributed  a  number 

[61] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

of  poems  to  the  UNITED  STATES  LITERARY 
GAZETTE,  a  new  semi-monthly  literary 
periodical,  and  after  graduation  many  of 
his  poems  will  be  found  in  the  GAZETTE 
with  the  early  verses  of  Bryant. 

It  is  seldom  that  a  young  man  enters 
college  with  a  definite  plan  for  life,  but 
Longfellow  had  decided  at  this  early  age 
that  he  would  choose  a  literary  career. 
Law,  medicine,  theology  did  not  appeal 
to  him;  but  his  father  would  not  listen  to 
his  literary  plans.  Instead  he  insisted 
upon  his  studying  law  in  his  own  office. 
There  the  youth  of  nineteen  was  offered 
the  new  position  of  professor  of  modern 
languages  in  Bowdoin  College,  with  the 
privilege  of  a  year's  study  in  Europe.  He 
gladly  accepted  it,  but  his  stay  abroad 
was  prolonged  to  three  years.  One  year 
he  devoted  to  France,  Spain  and  Italy; 
the  remainder  to  study  in  Germany.  He 
entered  upon  his  duties  at  Bowdoin  College 
when  only  twenty-two  years  of  age.  The 
results  of  Longfellow's  European  studies 
may  be  found  in  Outre-Mery  a  series  of 
prose  sketches  of  his  travels  written  in 
the  style  of  Washington  Irving.  It  is  a 
remarkable  fact  that  all  his  early  work 
was  in  prose,  Outre -Mer  being  followed  by 


THE  POET  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

Hyperion^  a  rhetorical  romance  of  a  young 
lover's  visit  to  Europe.  This  second  prose 
work  seemed  to  stimulate  his  long  dormant 
poetical  faculty  and  he  wrote  the  poems 
which  appeared  in  his  first  book  of  verse, 
Voices  of  the  Night. 

Longfellow  at  this  time  was  established 
as  Professor  of  Modern  Languages  at 
Harvard  College.  He  made  his  home  in 
the  historic  Craigie  House  at  Cambridge, 
where  he  lived  for  the  remainder  of  his  life. 
After  eighteen  years  of  service  as  professor 
he  retired  and  devoted  himself  entirely  to 
literature.  His  home  life  was  ideal  but 
marked  by  two  tragedies.  His  first  wife 
died  suddenly  during  his  second  visit  to 
Europe,  while  his  second  wife  was  fatally 
burned  at  her  own  fireside.  Longfellow 
kept  open  house  for  years  at  Cambridge, 
entertaining  everyone  of  note  who  visited 
the  city.  Howells  in  his  Literary  Friends 
and  Acquaintance  gives  a  very  attrac 
tive  pidhire  of  Longfellow's  life  in  his 
later  years  at  Cambridge  —  an  old  age 
full  of  "honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of 
friends."  On  his  last  visit  to  Europe  he 
was  given  the  Doctor's  degree  by  Cam 
bridge  and  Oxford  and  all  London  paid 
him  high  honors. 

[63] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Anyone  who  takes  up  Longfellow's 
poems  is  sure  to  be  impressed  by  the 
number  of  striking  lines  that  he  has  con 
tributed  to  our  literature.  He  seemed  to 
have  the  faculty  of  putting  a  fine  thought 
into  quotable  form,  and  his  early  verses 
yield  a  richer  harvest  of  these  things  than 
his  later  and  maturer  poems.  In  reading 
Voices  of  the  Night,  his  first  volume  of 
verse,  one  comes  upon  a  remarkable  collec 
tion  of  lines  which  have  passed  into  the 
body  of  current  American  speech.  John 
Bartlett  in  his  Familiar  Quotations  gives 
eight  pages  to  selections  from  Emerson 
and  eleven  pages  to  extracts  from  Long 
fellow.  Into  his  early  poems,  written  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  young  manhood,  he  put 
so  much  of  spiritual  force  that  they  are 
stamped  upon  the  reader's  memory.  Here, 
for  instance,  is  A  Psalm  of  Life,  with  its 
splendid  optimism  cast  in  lines  that  have 
become  household  words,  and  here  tfhe 
Reaper  and  the  Flowers  or  a  Psalm  of 
Death.  Then  follow  the  ballads,  The  Skele 
ton  in  Armor,  with  its  superb  vision  of  a 
Norse  Viking's  storm  life,  and  the  pathos 
of  'The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus.  Here  also 
are  'fhe  Village  Blacksmith,  Excelsior  and 
Maidenhood.  Four  years  later  appeared 


THE  POET  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

a  group  of  poems  of  which  The  Belfry  of 
Bruges,  The  Arsenal  at  Springfield  and 
^he  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs  were  the  most 
noteworthy.  The  Springfield  Arsenal  Long 
fellow  inspected  in  company  with  Charles 
Sumner,  and  the  poem  that  resulted  from 
this  visit  is  an  eloquent  plea  for  peace. 
These  verses,  which  sum  up  the  poet's 
creed,  have  special  force  at  this  time  when 
more  than  half  the  civilized  world  is 
engaged  in  the  most  destructive  war  ever 
known : 

Were  half  the  power,  that  fills  the  world  with  terror, 

Were  half  the  wealth  bestowed  on  camps  and  courts, 

Given  to  redeem  the  human  mind  from  error, 
There  were  no  need  of  arsenals  or  forts: 

The  warrior's  name  would  be  a  name  abhorred! 

And  every  nation,  that  should  lift  again 
Its  head  against  a  brother,  on  its  forehead 

Would  wear  forevermore  the  curse  of  Cain! 

Of  all  Longfellow's  shorter  poems  the 
one  which  has  probably  had  the  widest 
appeal  is  that  entitled  Resignation,  written 
after  the  death  of  his  little  daughter 
Fanny.  In  no  other  poem  with  which  I 
am  familiar  is  found  the  same  pathos  over 
the  loss  of  a  dear  one,  the  same  assurance 
of  meeting  in  a  better  world  the  child  who 
has  gone  before.  Though  almost  as  famil 
iar  as  the  best  Psalms,  two  verses  are 

[65] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

quoted   here    to   show   the   simplicity   of 
Longfellow's  methods: 

There  is  no  flock,  however  watched  and  tended, 

But  one  dead  lamb  is  there! 
There  is  no  fireside,  howsoe'er  defended, 

But  has  one  vacant  chair! 
*        *        * 

There  is  no  Death!    What  seems  so  is  transition; 

This  life  of  mortal  breath 

Is  but  a  suburb  of  the  life  Elysian 

Whose  portal  we  call  Death. 

Three  of  Longfellow's  longer  poems  are 
worth  notice,  not  only  because  of  their 
many  beauties  of  thought  and  form  but 
because  they  are  distinctively  American. 
These  are  Evangeline,  Hiawatba  and  The 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standisb.  The  pathetic 
romance  of  the  Acadian  lovers,  which 
Longfellow  immortalized  in  hexameters  in 
Evangeline,  was  suggested  by  a  story  told 
by  a  Catholic  priest  to  Hawthorne  and  by 
him  repeated  to  Longfellow,  who  begged 
permission  to  make  a  poem  of  it.  It  is 
the  most  perfect  thing  that  Longfellow  ever 
wrote.  ¥ke  Song  of  Hiawatha^  perhaps, 
has  had  a  greater  vogue,  as  it  pictures  the 
life,  the  customs  and  the  religious  rites  of 
the  American  Indian.  The  poet  drew  his 
materials  from  legends  of  the  Ojibway 
tribe  and  he  cast  it  in  the  form  of  the 
Kavalera,  which  gave  great  freedom  of 

[66] 


THE  POET  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

expression  and  free  play  of  alliteration. 
The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standisb,  also  told 
in  hexameters,  is  full  of  fine  pictures  of 
Colonial  life. 

It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  the  literary 
life  that  the  poem  on  which  Longfellow 
spent  the  most  effort  and  regarded  as  his 
best  made  little  impression  on  the  great 
world  of  readers.  This  was  Christus,  a 
series  of  eloquent  pictures  of  the  life  of 
the  Savior.  Another  work  on  which  Long 
fellow  lavished  much  pains  was  a  metrical 
translation  of  Dante  which  shared  the  fate 
of  Cbristus. 

Longfellow  was  a  master  of  many  forms 
of  the  poetical  art,  but  he  was  especially 
skilful  in  handling  the  sonnet.  Especially 
fine  are  the  six  sonnets  on  The  Divine 
Comedy  of  Dante  and  the  sonnet  on  The 
Cross  of  Snow  —  a  tribute  to  his  wife, 
who  met  the  cruelest  of  deaths  by  her 
own  fireside. 

Perhaps  the  best  summing  up  of  Long 
fellow's  influence  is  found  in  these  lines  by 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson:  "He  will 
never  be  read  for  the  profoundest  stirring, 
or  for  the  unlocking  of  the  deepest  mys 
teries;  he  will  always  be  read  for  invigo- 
ration,  for  comfort,  for  content." 


LOWELL 

As  POET,  ESSAYIST 
AND  CRITIC 

His  "COMMEMORATION  ODE,"  "THE  BIG- 
LOW  PAPERS  "  AND  His  LITERARY 
ESSAYS  His  BEST  WORK. 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL'S  place  as  poet, 
essayist  and  critic  is  not  clearly 
defined.  He  came  very  near  greatness  as 
both  poet  and  essayist,  but  he  missed, 
a  place  in  the  first  rank,  largely  through 
a  certain  frostiness  of  temperament.  As 
a  critic  he  has  been  assailed  recently 
by  Dr.  Joseph  J.  Reilly,  formerly  of  the 
College  of  the  City  of  New  York,  who 
declares  that  he  has  no  claim  to  the  name 
of  a  scientific  literary  critic  of  the  class  of 
Sainte-Beuve  or  Matthew  Arnold;  but 
over  against  this  must  be  placed  the  dictum 
of  William  Dean  Howells,  who  says  of 
Lowell:  "In  his  lectures  on  the  English 
poets  he  has  proved  himself  easily  the 

[68] 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

IN  1857 
FROM  A  CRAYON  DRAWING  BY  S.  W.  ROWSE 


LOWELL,  POET,  ESSAYIST  AND  CRITIC 

wisest  and  finest  critic  in  our  language." 
Certainly  in  the  quality  of  literary  stimulus 
Lowell's  essays  must  be  given  a  foremost 
place.  Even  about  Shakespeare  he  has 
something  novel  and  illuminating  to  say, 
and  upon  the  lesser  writers  of  the  Eliza 
bethan  era  he  pours  a  flood  of  light.  He 
makes  all  these  old  worthies  very  real  and 
human,  as  though  they  were  of  our  own 
time.  Lowell  was  hurt  also  by  the  fact 
that  he  was  what  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  called  a  New  England  Brahmin. 
He  was  a  natural  aristocrat,  who  believed 
that  a  long  and  well-defined  strain  of  good 
blood  was  necessary  for  a  man  to  accom 
plish  much  in  this  world.  It  was  this 
strong  strain  of  the  aristocrat  in  him, 
joined  to  his  great  ability  as  an  after- 
dinner  speaker,  that  made  Lowell  so 
popular  in  England  when  he  was  American 
Minister  to  St.  James.  Another  trait  of 
Lowell's  that  has  repelled  many  readers  is 
the  strong  school-masterish  tendency  that 
leads  him  to  lecture  his  readers  frequently 
and  to  go  into  tedious  detail  on  many 
subjects. 

But  with  all  these  drawbacks  Lowell  has 
fairly  held  his  own,  and  he  probably  has 
more  readers  today  than  when  he  was 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

before  the  public  as  our  Minister  to  Eng 
land.  His  poetry  fills  five  good-sized 
volumes,  but  all  that  will  live  may  be 
squeezed  into  less  than  one  volume.  His 
greatest  poem  is  the  magnificent  Commem 
oration  Ode,  written  to  celebrate  the 
dedication  of  the  noble  Memorial  Hall  at 
Harvard,  erected  in  memory  of  those  of 
the  New  England  university's  sons  who 
fell  in  the  Civil  War.  It  sounds  the 
heights  and  the  depths  of  American 
patriotism,  and  it  contains  in  a  few  lines 
the  finest  portrait  of  Lincoln  that  has  ever 
been  drawn.  The  poems  also  include  ^he 
Biglow  Papers,  which  are  supreme  as  the 
best  version  of  the  Yankee  dialect  in  our 
literature,  as  well  as  some  of  the  keenest 
satire  on  the  pretensions  of  the  Southern 
pro-slavery  party  that  brought  on  the 
Mexican  War. 

Lowell  as  a  poet  seldom  gave  the  public 
an  imperfect  line.  He  was  a  master  of 
his  craft.  His  wide  study  and  reading  and 
his  command  of  many  tongues  made  the 
technical  part  of  the  poet's  work  as  easy 
for  him  as  it  was  for  Byron  or  Swinburne. 
Melodious  is  the  term  which  best  applies 
to  all  his  verse,  but  he  had  something  more 
than  melody  and  sweetness.  He  had  the 


LOWELL,  POET,  ESSAYIST  AND  CRITIC 

faculty,  which  Emerson  lacked,  of  making 
the  reader  see  and  feel  the  charm  of  the 
New  England  seasons  and  the  beauty  of 
the  common  flowers  of  the  garden  and  the 
field. 

To  Lowell  all  nature  appealed  with  new 
force  and  beauty  every  morning,  as  though 
he  were  born  again  each  day,  with  unjaded 
senses,  eager  to  savor  the  perfume  of  the 
flowers,  keen  to  note  the  beauty  of  clouds 
and  trees,  of  green  sloping  meadows  and 
of  lakes  flashing  in  the  clear  sunlight. 
When  he  touches  on  nature  you  feel  the 
poet  let  himself  go;  he  warms  your  soul 
with  his  passionate  love  of  the  woods,  the 
fields  and  the  sea. 

Into  his  essays  Lowell  poured  out  the 
wealth  of  his  learning,  while  at  the  same 
time  he  indulged  his  strong  taste  for  many 
intellectual  and  critical  hobbies.  He  pre 
faced  a  new  edition  of  ^he  Biglow  Papers 
with  a  hundred-page  dissertation  on  the 
New  England  dialect,  which  he  proved  by 
hundreds  of  examples  was  derived  straight 
from  the  English  of  Cromwell's  time. 
Scores  of  words  which  are  now  obsolete 
in  England  are  preserved  in  the  quaint 
dialect,  the  curious  clipped  speech  of  Hosea 
Biglow,  Birdofredum  Sawin  and  other 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

characters  in  these  famous  satires  in  verse. 
Lowell  shows  keen  enjoyment  in  dredging 
up  these  old,  forgotten  words  and  proving 
that  they  are  far  more  expressive  than  the 
more  decorous  terms  that  have  taken  their 
place  in  the  common  speech. 

In  such  essays  as  those  on  Dante, 
Chaucer  and  Shakespeare,  Lowell  reveals 
a  range  of  reading  and  a  niceness  of  critical 
art  that  can  be  found  in  the  work  of  no 
other  American  essayist.  Hazlitt  and 
Froude  at  their  best  do  not  surpass  him 
here  on  his  chosen  ground.  And  one  is 
struck  on  nearly  every  page  by  some 
homely  simile  or  metaphor,  some  home 
spun  example,  that  shows  how  well  an 
chored  Lowell  was  to  "  the  stern  and  rock- 
bound  coast"  that  colored  his  genius  while 
it  chilled  his  temperament. 

Lowell  differs  from  nearly  every  other 
American  writer  in  his  training  and  his 
life.  Born  of  a  family  of  Congregational 
preachers,  he  showed  no  fondness  for  reli 
gion,  but  early  developed  a  strong  love  for 
poetry  and  general  literature.  Everything 
was  made  easy  for  him  by  ample  means 
when  a  youth,  and  he  lived  his  whole  life 
at  Elmwood,  the  stately  home  in  Cam 
bridge,  where  he  was  born.  Save  for  tern- 

[72] 


LOWELL,  POET,  ESSAYIST  AND  CRITIC 

porary  financial  straits  in  his  early  man 
hood,  he  always  had  a  modest  competence 
and  he  was  able  to  select  the  work  which 
he  loved.  Like  Emerson,  he  entered  Har 
vard  at  the  early  age  of  fifteen  years,  but 
gained  no  distinction  in  scholarship.  He 
studied  law,  but  soon  gave  this  up  and 
devoted  himself  to  poetry. 

Through  his  marriage  he  came  into  close 
contact  with  the  anti-slavery  leaders,  and 
this  association  fired  his  genius.  In  The 
Biglow  Papers,  written  to  voice  the  senti 
ment  of  New  England  on  the  unjust 
Mexican  War,  which  was  carried  out  in  the 
interest  of  the  Southern  slaveholders,  he 
first  put  the  Yankee  dialect  into  literature. 
The  racy  humor  of  these  sketches  in  prose 
and  verse  met  a  warm  response  at  home 
and  abroad,  and  they  first  made  Lowell 
known  to  his  countrymen.  This  period 
also  witnessed  the  writing  of  many  anti- 
slavery  poems,  among  which  the  most 
notable  are  those  on  Garrison,  Freedom, 
'The  Parting  of  the  Ways  and  The  Washers 
of  the  Shroud. 

At  the  age  of  thirty-six  Lowell,  who  had 
made  a  reputation  as  a  critic  by  a  series 
of  lectures  on  the  English  poets  before  the 
Lowell  Institute,  accepted  the  chair  of 

[73] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

French  and  Spanish  literature  at  Harvard, 
which  had  been  occupied  by  Ticknor  and 
Longfellow  before  him.  He  held  this  pro 
fessorship  for  seventeen  years,  during 
which  he  did  a  large  anount  of  work  in 
verse  and  prose.  In  1872  he  resigned  his 
chair  at  Harvard  and  devoted  himself  to 
literary  work.  He  made  frequent  trips  to 
Europe,  and  he  acquired  in  this  way  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  France,  Spain  and 
Italy. 

Public  honors  came  to  him  in  1877,  when 
he  was  appointed  Minister  to  Spain,  and 
three  years  later,  when  he  was  made 
United  States  Minister  to  England.  Lowell 
was  the  most  popular  American  Minister 
to  the  court  of  St.  James,  his  ability  as  an 
after-dinner  speaker  contributing  largely 
to  his  success.  He  served  five  years  before 
he  was  relieved  by  President  Cleveland. 
Five  years  later  he  died  at  his  old  Elmwood 
home,  full  of  years  and  honors. 

Of  Lowell's  poems  the  Commemoration 
Ode  is  his  best  work.  It  is  unmatched  in 
American  literature  for  its  lofty  patriotism. 
Here  Lowell's  genius  seemed  to  move  with 
out  hindrance;  it  reached  the  climax  of 
eloquence  in  the  famous  portrait  of  Lincoln, 
of  which  these  are  noteworthy  lines: 

[74] 


LOWELL,  POET,  ESSAYIST  AND  CRITIC 

Here  was  a  type  of  the  true  elder  race, 

And  one  of  Plutarch's  men  talked  with  us  face  to  face. 

*  *        * 

Great  captains,  with  their  guns  and  drums, 

Disturb  our  judgment  for  the  hour, 
But  at  last  silence  comes; 

These  all  are  gone,  and,  standing  like  a  tower, 
Our  children  shall  behold  his  fame, 

The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  forseeing  man, 
Sagacious,  patient,  dreading  praise,  not  blame, 

New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American. 

And  here  is  the  climax  of  his  splendid 
apostrophe  to  his  country: 

O  Beautiful!     My  Country!    Ours  once  more, 
Smoothing  thy  gold  of  war-disheveled  hair 
O'er  such  sweet  brows  as  never  other  wore, 

And  letting  thy  set  lips, 

Freed  from  wrath's  pale  eclipse, 
The  rosy  edges  of  their  smile  lay  bare. 

*  *        * 

What  were  our  lives  without  thee? 

What  all  our  lives  to  save  thee? 

We  reck  not  what  we  gave  thee; 

We  will  not  dare  to  doubt  thee, 

But  ask  whatever  else,  and  we  will  dare! 

Other  fine  poems  are  The  Vision  of  Sir 
Launfaly  with  its  impressive  lesson  in 
genuine  Christianity;  The  Washers  of  the 
Shroud^  one  of  the  best  of  the  poems  pro 
duced  by  the  sweat  and  agony  of  the  Civil 
War,  and  the  pathetic  little  poems  on  the 
death  of  his  daughter  and  of  his  wife. 
After  the  Burial  is  one  of  the  finest  bits  of 
verse  in  the  language.  Of  course,  *The 
Biglow  Papers  are  full  of  good  things,  as 

[75] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

well  as  A  Fable  for  Critics,  a  series  of  bril 
liant  pen  pictures  of  American  authors,  and 
Under  the  Willows,  a  rhapsody  on  June  in 
New  England. 

Lowell's  best  prose  work  may  be  found 
in  My  Study  Windows  and  the  three  vol 
umes  of  Among  My  Books.  Above  every 
thing  else,  Lowell  was  the  scholar,  and  his 
essays  reveal  this  quality  in  excess.  He 
had  the  nicest  sense  of  language,  and 
especially  in  discussing  the  old  English 
worthies  like  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Mil 
ton  and  Dryden,  this  faculty  was  allowed 
free  range.  The  essays  on  these  English 
poets  are  well  worth  reading,  as  Lowell 
brings  to  bear  on  his  subject  a  mass  of 
material,  gathered  from  wide  reading  and 
critical  study.  His  style  is  very  brilliant, 
but  at  the  same  time  it  often  seems  almost 
colloquial,  so  easy  was  it  for  this  master 
of  expression  to  develop  his  thought. 

Wit  and  humor  play  over  all  his  work 
and  make  it  a  delight  to  read.  The  drollest 
conceits  occur  to  him,  and  he  gives  them 
free  play;  his  fancy  invents  many  novel 
ideas,  and  he  takes  the  keenest  delight 
even  in  making  puns.  Among  American 
critics  no  one  has  ever  equaled  Lowell  in 
his  capacity  for  making  even  a  heavy  sub- 

[76] 


LOWELL,  POET,  ESSAYIST  AND  CRITIC 

jecl:  as  interesting  as  a  novel.  And  behind 
all  this  sparkle  of  wit  was  the  man  who  was 
greater  as  a  talker  than  a  writer.  Scores 
of  famous  men  have  borne  witness  to 
Lowell's  rare  charm  in  conversation  —  a 
charm  that  made  men  like  Carlyle  and 
Thackeray  and  Froude  remain  silent  when 
he  held  forth  at  table.  Lowell  wrote  much 
which  the  world  may  well  forget,  but  his 
best  verse  and  his  best  prose  are  worth  a 
place  even  on  a  five-foot  shelf  of  the  world's 
great  books. 


[77] 


WIT  AND  HUMOR 

OF  OLIVER  WENDELL 

HOLMES 

WISE  AND  TENDER  PASSAGES  IN  "THE 
AUTOCRAT  OF  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE" 
—  SOME  OF  His  MOST  POPULAR  POEMS. 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  was  an  Amer 
ican  Admirable  Crichton.  He  was  a 
man  who  could  do  a  half-dozen  things  as 
well  as  a  specialist  in  each.  As  a  poet  he 
will  be  remembered  longest  by  The  One- 
Hoss  Sbay,  The  Last  Leaf  and  Old  Iron 
sides;  as  an  essayist  he  gained  immortality 
by  fbe  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table; 
as  a  novelist  he  produced  that  wonderful 
study  in  heredity,  Elsie  Venner;  as  a  writer 
of  occasional  verses  he  was  acknowledged 
to  be  without  an  equal;  as  a  physician  he 
took  high  rank,  and  many  of  his  medical 
papers  have  become  classics;  as  a  literary 
critic  he  was  both  feared  and  admired,  as 
he  had  the  faculty  of  almost  uncanny 

[78] 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

IN  1856 
AT  THE  AGE  OF  FORTY-SEVEN 


WIT  AND  HUMOR  OF  HOLMES 

insight  and  an  incisive  style  that  pierced 
all  pretense;  as  an  after-dinner  speaker  he 
was  without  a  superior  in  his  day.  He  is 
lighter  in  his  touch  than  Lamb,  but  his 
pathos  is  as  true  as  Elia's  or  Tom  Hood's. 

What  impresses  the  reader  in  all  Holmes' 
work  is  the  abounding  vitality  of  the  man, 
the  quickness  of  his  fancy,  the  readiness 
of  his  wit  and  the  felicity  with  which  he 
always  chooses  the  right  word,  whether  in 
verse  or  in  prose. 

Although  of  purest  New  England  strain, 
Holmes  had  few  of  the  genuine  Yankee 
traits.  In  an  age  which  was  marked  by 
religious  intolerance,  he  early  showed  the 
greatest  liberality  in  thought.  Among 
men  who  were  noted  for  their  Puritan 
gravity,  he  saw  the  amusing  side  of  every 
question,  and  knew  how  to  extract  all  the 
fun  that  was  in  it.  Among  a  prosaic  race, 
he  revealed  a  sensitive  instinct  for  poetical 
form  that  makes  his  verse  a  delight  to 
read.  When  other  writers  were  given  to 
expounding  their  views  in  the  orthodox 
way,  Holmes  devised  the  art  of  getting 
into  close  touch  with  his  readers  by  means 
of  his  colloquial  gifts.  Much  of  the  charm 
of  the  Autocrat  lies  in  his  familiar  talks 
with  the  reader,  his  letting  down  the  bars  of 

[79] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

reserve  so  that  you  see  the  kindly  nature 
of  the  man,  even  when  you  hear  the  sharp 
words  with  which  he  castigates  folly  or 
vice.  In  this  lies  the  great  charm  of 
Holmes,  whose  books  can  never  become 
old-fashioned  or  tiresome.  It  seems  easy, 
this  colloquialism  bristling  with  epigram, 
repartee  and  quaint  conceit,  but  try  to 
imitate  it,  and  you  will  soon  see  how  diffi 
cult  it  is. 

Many  have  been  the  writers  who  have 
followed  Holmes  in  this  attractive  path 
which  he  first  blazed  in  the  Autocrat,  but 
not  one  has  equaled  the  master.  And 
although  more  than  fifty  years  have  passed 
since  these  delightful  essays  first  saw  the 
light  in  the  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY,  they  are 
as  fresh,  as  true  and  as  stimulating  as 
when  they  were  written.  Considering  the 
remarkable  advance  in  all  the  physical 
sciences,  upon  which  Holmes  drew  largely 
for  his  apt  illustrations,  his  skill  in  striking 
the  modern  note  is  simply  miraculous. 
While  much  of  the  work  of  his  contem 
poraries  has  been  rendered  obsolete,  his 
remains  as  full  of  piquancy  and  truth  as 
it  was  a  half-century  ago. 

Dr.  Holmes  was  born  in  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  in  1809,  and  he  lived  until 

[80] 


WIT  AND  HUMOR  OF  HOLMES 

1894,  reaching  the  great  age  of  eighty-five 
years,  with  most  of  his  senses  unimpaired. 
Even  to  the  last  he  impressed  every-one 
by  the  youthfulness  and  buoyancy  of  his 
spirits  and  his  keen  interest  in  all  the  con 
cerns  of  life.  His  father  was  a  preacher, 
but  Holmes  very  early  learned  to  look 
upon  life  with  the  eyes  of  a  philosopher. 
He  showed  at  preparatory  school  a  pretty 
skill  in  the  translation  of  Virgil  into 
English  verse,  and  at  college  he  delivered 
a  metrical  essay  before  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
at  his  commencement. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-four  he  went  to 
Europe  to  continue  his  medical  studies, 
and  spent  three  years  in  London  and  Paris. 
This  experience  was  invaluable  in  enlarging 
his  point  of  view.  He  devoted  his  leisure 
to  writing  verse,  and  in  1836  he  published 
his  first  volume  of  poems,  which  included 
Old  Ironsides,  that  noble  plea  to  save  the 
frigate  Constitution,  which  still  has  power 
to  stir  the  blood  of  any  patriotic  American. 
Holmes  was  active  in  his  profession  for 
eleven  years,  when  he  accepted  the  Har 
vard  chair  of  anatomy,  which  he  held  for 
thirty-five  years,  when  he  was  retired  as 
emeritus  professor,  a  position  which  he 
held  until  his  death.  He  was  regarded  as 

[81] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

one  of  the  best  medical  authorities  in  this 
country,  while  at  the  same  time  he  came 
to  be  known  as  the  wittiest  after-dinner 
speaker  in  Boston  and  one  of  the  cleverest 
writers  of  verses  of  occasion. 

It  was  in  1858,  when  the  ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY  was  founded,  that  Holmes  first 
showed  his  rare  ability  as  an  essayist.  He 
contributed  to  the  first  number  the  initial 
paper  of  'The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast 
Table,  a  series  of  talks  on  all  kinds  of 
subjects,  strung  on  a  thread  of  amusing 
fiction.  The  sage  who  delivers  these  mono 
logues  is  the  central  figure  at  a  typical 
boarding-house  table,  and  the  other  char 
acters,  like  the  young  fellow  John,  the 
poetess,  the  landlady  and  her  boy,  Ben 
Franklin,  all  serve  to  add  reality  and  point 
to  the  amusing  talks. 

It  is  difficult  to  indicate  the  charm  of 
this  work,  which  may  be  read  with  relish 
again  and  again,  so  full  is  it  of  real  human 
nature,  so  saturated  with  that  philosophy 
which  believes  that  this  world  is  a  good 
place  and  that  even  the  wicked  and  the 
ill-natured  have  more  good  than  evil  in 
their  natures.  The  genial  optimism  of 
Holmes  has  nothing  weak  or  sentimental 
in  it.  You  feel  in  reading  the  Autocrat's 

[82] 


WIT  AND  HUMOR  OF  HOLMES 

sharp  speeches  that  here  is  a  man  who  has 
a  very  firm  grip  on  the  realities  of  life, 
who  has  seen  the  seamy  side  of  life  in  the 
great  cities  of  the  world,  but  who  has  kept 
his  nature  sweet  and  hopeful  because  his 
mind  is  healthy  and  his  spirit  is  open  to 
all  good  influences. 

The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table  is 
Holmes'  masterpiece.  It  is  assured  of 
immortality  so  long  as  the  English  language 
endures,  for  it  will  be  just  as  good  reading 
fifty  years  hence  as  it  is  today.  It  has 
a  few  earmarks  of  the  period  when  it  was 
written,  such  as  the  tendency  to  italicize 
striking  sentences  and  to  introduce  bits  of 
Latin  quotations.  But  these  are  the  only 
ones.  It  is  packed  full  of  intellectual  meat, 
and  a  very  pretty  vein  of  humor  serves  to 
make  the  old  Autocrat's  preaching  free 
from  all  tedium. 

It  will  surprise  anyone  who  looks  through 
it  to  find  how  many  ideas  that  have  become 
commonplace  now  were  first  offered  here 
by  Dr.  Holmes  for  public  consideration. 
A  strong  medical  streak  runs  through  all 
the  monologues,  and  many  of  the  meta 
phors  and  similes  are  also  drawn  from  the 
domain  of  natural  science;  but  the  charm 
of  the  book  lies  in  the  sunny  philosophy  of 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

the  old  scholar,  who  has  seen  life  at  its 
best  and  at  its  worst,  and  who  still  finds 
it  good  to  be  alive  and  to  feel  the  sap  of 
youth  in  his  veins  although  the  years  may 
have  touched  his  head  with  frost.  Here 
are  bits  of  the  Autocrat's  wisdom,  which 
may  be  taken  as  fair  specimens  of  his  talk: 

Your  self-made  man,  whittled  into  shape  with  his  own  jack- 
knife,  deserves  more  credit  than  the  regular  engine-turned  article, 
shaped  by  the  most  approved  pattern,  and  French  polished  by 
society  and  travel.  But  as  to  saying  that  one  is  every  way  the 
equal  of  the  other,  that  is  another  matter. 

*  *        * 

Don't  flatter  yourselves  that  friendship  authorizes  you  to 
say  disagreeable  things  to  your  intimates.  On  the  contrary, 
the  nearer  you  come  into  a  relation  with  a  person  the  more  neces 
sary  do  tacT:  and  courtesy  become.  Except  in  cases  of  necessity, 
which  are  rare,  leave  your  friend  to  learn  unpleasant  truths  from 
his  enemies:  they  are  ready  enough  to  tell  them. 

*  *        * 

Our  brains  are  seventy-year  clocks.  The  Angel  of  Life  winds 
them  up  once  for  all,  then  closes  the  case,  and  gives  the  key  into 
the  hand  of  the  Angel  of  the  Resurrection. 

Tic-tac!  tic-tac!  go  the  wheels  of  thought;  our  will  cannot 
stop  them;  they  cannot  stop  themselves;  sleep  cannot  stop 
them;  madness  only  makes  them  go  faster;  death  alone  can 
break  the  case,  and,  seizing  the  ever-swinging  pendulum,  which 
we  call  the  heart,  silence  at  last  the  clicking  of  the  terrible 
escarpment  we  have  carried  so  long  beneath  our  wrinkled 
foreheads. 

Holmes  enlivens  the  "Autocrat"  with 
many  poems,  which  vary  greatly  in  merit, 
but  as  they  include  The  Wonderful  One- 
Hoss  Sbay,  The  Chambered  Nautilus  and 
The  Living  Temple,  the  average  is  lifted 
pretty  high.  The  last  two  serve  to  illus- 


WIT  AND  HUMOR  OF  HOLMES 

trate  very  well  Holmes'  great  gift  of  trans 
muting  scientific  truths  into  the  finest 
poetry. 

The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table 
appeared  a  year  after  the  Autocrat.  It 
was  marked  by  a  delightful  love  story,  and 
the  characters  were  more  sharply  drawn. 
Fourteen  years  later  appeared  The  Poet  at 
the  Breakfast  Table,  a  work  which  showed 
greater  maturity  than  either  of  the  others, 
but  lacked  their  spontaneity  and  charm. 

In  Elsie  Venner  Holmes  wrought  out  a 
story  of  the  influence  of  prenatal  impres 
sions  which  would  have  attracted  Haw 
thorne.  He  made  of  it  a  remarkable  study, 
despite  certain  chapters  that  remind  one 
that  the  author  was  a  doctor. 

Of  Holmes'  poems  the  two  that  have 
had  the  widest  circulation  are  Old  Ironsides 
and  The  Last  Leaf,  each  perfect  of  its  kind. 
The  first  was  written  to  arouse  public 
sentiment  against  the  threatened  destruc 
tion  of  the  old  frigate  Constitution.  The 
other  was  suggested  to  Holmes  by  Major 
Thomas  Melville,  the  last  of  the  old  gener 
ation  in  Boston  that  clung  to  the  cocked 
hat  and  the  wig  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Holmes'  poems  fill  a  large  octavo  volume 
of  350  pages.  They  were  mainly  verses 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

written  for  special  occasions,  but  the  poet 
put  so  much  of  real  feeling  into  them  that 
they  are  worthy  of  preservation.  Take  it 
all  in  all,  Holmes  fills  a  niche  in  American 
literature  which  is  his  by  virtue  of  his 
originality  and  his  pervading  charm. 


[86] 


WHITTIER 

THE  PURITAN 

SINGER 

THE  ANTI-SLAVERY  BARD  WHOSE  "SNOW 
BOUND/'  "TENT  ON  THE  BEACH"  AND 
OTHER  POEMS  ARE  FULL  OF  SPIRITUAL 
FIRE. 

WHITTIER  is  a  poet  who  appeals  far 
more  to  Americans  than  to  Euro 
peans  because  he  appealed  with  special 
force  to  all  of  New  England  strain.  His 
life  was  a  complete  contradiction  to  his 
natural  traits.  Born  a  Quaker,  with  a 
strong  bias  in  favor  of  peace,  he  was  thrown 
from  early  youth  into  the  fierce  turmoil  of 
the  anti-slavery  agitation,  and  he  contrib 
uted  many  poems  that  served  to  hearten 
the  small  faction  in  New  England  that 
labored  for  the  freedom  of  the  slave.  Sel 
dom  traveling  more  than  a  few  miles  from 
his  birthplace  in  Massachusetts  and  never 
visiting  Europe,  he  yet  rivals  Longfellow 

[87] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

in  his  references  to  foreign  scenes  and 
historical  events.  Whittier  had  fewer  ad 
vantages  and  less  regular  education  than 
any  other  American  writer  of  prominence; 
he  was  also  handicapped  from  early  youth 
by  ailments  that  would  have  converted  a 
man  of  less  will  power  into  a  chronic, 
peevish  invalid.  That  he  educated  him 
self  and  that  he  did  work  in  verse  which 
has  given  him  a  foremost  place  among 
American  poets  was  as  great  an  achieve 
ment  as  was  the  literary  work  of  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  accomplished  often  while 
he  was  ill  in  bed  and  suffering  acute  pain. 
This  triumph  of  the  mind'  and  the  spirit 
over  weakness  of  the  flesh  gave  power  to 
much  of  Whittier's  work;  it  touched  his 
words  with  flame;  it  fused  into  the  white 
heat  of  passion  many  of  his  battle  hymns 
during  the  long  anti-slavery  struggle  that 
preceded  the  Civil  War. 

Many  have  forgotten  the  important  part 
which  Whittier  played  in  arousing  popular 
sentiment  throughout  the  Northern  states 
in  favor  of  the  rights  of  the  slaves  in  the 
South.  But  it  is  easy  to  see  what  he 
accomplished  when  one  reads  the  poems  on 
the  wrongs  of  the  slave  which  he  poured 
forth.  One  short  poem  alone  roused  all 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 
IN  His  AMESBURY  GARDEN  AT  THE  AGE  OF 

SEVENTY-NINE 
FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  TAKEN  IN  1886 


WHITTIER,  THE  PURITAN  SINGER 

New  England  and  seemed  to  be  the  audible 
voice  of  lamentation  over  the  fall  of  a  great 
champion  of  the  cause  of  freedom.  In 
Ichabod  Whittier  rose  to  sublime  heights 
of  invective;  he  branded  Daniel  Webster 
with  the  shame  of  betraying  his  principles 
for  political  ambition,  yet  this  he  did  more 
in  sorrow  than  in  anger.  Much  of  this 
anti-slavery  work  is  now  dead  and  mean 
ingless,  but  enough  remains  with  the  glow 
of  life  to  show  what  tremendous  force 
resided  in  the  pale,  scholarly  recluse  whose 
words  were  aglow  with  patriotism.  But 
much  of  Whittier's  work  was  done  in  other 
fields  of  verse.  The  New  England  of  the 
olden  time  is  seen  in  Skipper  Ires  on' s  Ride, 
while  that  of  a  later  day  is  reproduced  in 
such  charming  work  as  Snow-Bound  and 
Among  the  Hills.  The  beauty  of  the  soul 
is  revealed  in  My  Playmate  and  In  School 
Days,  two  perfect  poems  that  in  genuine 
pathos  are  equal  to  anything  that  Words 
worth  ever  wrote.  Longfellow  expressed 
the  strong  spiritual  quality  in  Whittier's 
verse  in  these  fine  lines: 

Thou  too  hast  heard 

Voices  and  melodies  from  beyond  the  gates, 
And  speakest  only  when  thy  soul  is  stirred! 

Whittier  is  one  of  the  few  American 

[89] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

poets  who  sings  of  life  on  the  farm  with 
real  enthusiasm.  He  was  born  on  a  farm 
at  Haverhill,  Massachusetts,  and,  despite 
his  bodily  weakness,  he  knew  what  farm 
labor  was  as  well  as  the  sports  in  which 
country  boys  delight.  Born  December  17, 
1807,  he  was  nineteen  when  his  first  poem 
was  published  in  the  Newburyport  FREE 
PRESS.  The  editor  of  that  paper  was 
William  Lloyd  Garrison,  afterward  the 
great  anti-slavery  leader.  So  impressed 
was  Garrison  with  the  ability  of  the  writer 
of  this  poem  and  another  which  followed 
it,  that  he  visited  Whittier's  home  and 
urged  him  to  attend  the  neighboring 
academy.  Whittier's  father  was  a  hard 
working  Quaker  farmer,  who  did  not  believe 
in  anything  but  the  virtues  of  labor  and 
thrift,  but  the  editor  of  the  Haverhill 
GAZETTE  having  promised  to  give  the  boy 
a  home  in  his  family,  the  father  yielded 
and  the  lad  was  permitted  to  take  up  the 
making  of  cheap  slippers  in  order  to  earn 
enough  money  to  carry  him  through  one 
term  at  the  academy.  School  teaching  and 
bookkeeping  furnished  the  funds  for  a 
second  term,  which  made  up  all  Whittier's 
regular  education. 

Like  all  great  writers,  Whittier  had  read 

[90] 


<r/ 


7    ^:^^/-.-' 

/ 


/V    /-/  ?,    c/"  l-'i-f  I         LfStJt 
<_.^    -     ,  v,  4«.;«      ,/c//-/;' 


FACSIMILE  OF  THE  MANUSCRIPT  "Mr  TRIUMPH," 
BY  JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 


WHITTIER,  THE  PURITAN  SINGER 

widely  and,  after  his  brief  school  life,  he 
entered  a  Haverhill  newspaper  office,  one 
of  the  best  of  training  schools.  There  and 
in  Boston  he  continued  to  edit  newspapers 
and  to  write  poems.  His  first  published 
work  was  Legends  of  New  England,  issued 
in  1831. 

As  a  youth  Whittier  had  taken  the  keen 
est  interest  in  the  anti-slavery  cause,  and 
it  was  in  recognition  of  his  services  that 
he  was  appointed  a  delegate  to  the  National 
Anti-Slavery  Society.  He  served  terms  in 
the  Massachusetts  State  Senate  and  Legis 
lature,  and  in  1836  moved  to  Amesbury, 
Massachusetts,  where  he  made  his  home 
as  long  as  he  lived.  He  was  extremely 
active  in  the  anti-slavery  cause  for  the 
next  four  years.  Then  he  began  writing 
for  the  NATIONAL  ERA  in  Washington.  One 
of  his  early  books  was  Voices  of  Freedom, 
issued  in  1849.  He  had  the  distinction  of 
contributing  a  poem  to  the  first  number  of 
the  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  in  1857  and  in 
the  same  year  the  well-known  Blue  and 
Gold  Edition  of  his  poems  was  published. 
Then  came  the  Civil  War,  which  called 
out  some  fine  poems,  the  most  noteworthy 
of  which  is  Laus  Deoy  celebrating  the  pas 
sage  of  the  constitutional  amendment 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

abolishing  slavery.  It  was  one  year  before 
the  war  ended  that  Whittier  lost  the 
beloved  sister  whose  death  he  commemo 
rated  a  year  after  in  the  exquisite  lines  in 
Snow-Bound.  In  Whittier's  last  years  his 
heart  was  warmed  by  the  great  public 
appreciation  of  his  poetical  work.  He  was 
asked  to  write  the  Centennial  hymn  for 
the  Philadelphia  Exposition,  and  his  seven 
tieth  birthday  was  marked  by  a  great 
banquet  given  by  his  publishers  in  his 
honor  to  the  contributors  to  the  ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY.  The  speeches  and  the  letters 
which  this  called  out  showed  the  high  place 
which  Whittier  occupied  in  public  regard. 
The  poet  died  in  1892,  full  of  years  and 
honors. 

It  is  needless  to  look  for  great  dramatic 
force  or  unusual  passion  in  Whittier's 
work.  His  poems  reflect  the  calm  of  his 
life,  which  was  broken  only  in  his  youth 
by  the  storm  and  stress  of  anti-slavery 
agitation.  Had  it  not  been  for  his  Quaker 
training  he  would  have  been  found  in  the 
ranks  of  the  early  volunteers  fighting  for 
the  cause  which  he  had  aided  with  his  pen. 
The  anti-slavery  poems,  most  of  them 
suggested  by  events  of  the  day,  fill  nearly 
one  hundred  double-column  pages  in  his 

[92] 


WHITTIER,  THE  PURITAN  SINGER 

complete  works.  They  begin  with  tributes 
to  Toussaint  L'Ouverture  and  to  Garrison, 
and  they  range  from  fiery  denunciation  of 
the  holders  of  slaves  to  songs  of  rejoicing 
over  the  spread  of  the  cause  of  freedom. 
Of  all  these  poems  the  one  which  appealed 
most  powerfully  to  the  public  fancy  was 
Barbara  Frietchie,  which  is  known  to  every 
American  child  in  the  public  schools. 
Many  fine  poems  are  included  in  this  col 
lection  of  wartime  lyrics,  among  which 
may  be  named  What  the  Birds  Said,  After 
the  Wary  To  Englishmen  and  The  Watchers. 
These  are  all  instinct  with  the  finest  spirit 
of  poetry  while  they  sound  the  ringing 
battle-cry  of  freedom  that  still  has  power 
to  stir  the  blood  like  the  blast  of  a  trumpet. 
Of  all  Whittier's  work  Snow-Bound 
reaches  the  highest  level  of  inspiration.  It 
is  a  picture  of  New  England  home  life  in 
midwinter,  of  the  family  fireside  painted 
with  the  truth  and  dignity  of  a  Dutch 
genre  artist,  and  of  the  tales  told  about  the 
chimney  corner  when  the  wind  roared 
about  the  roof-tree  and  the  sleet  beat  upon 
the  window  panes.  The  sketches  of  his 
parents,  his  beloved  sister  and  of  the  other 
persons  in  the  household  are  fine  examples 
of  Whittier's  skill  in  portraiture;  but  the 

[93] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

lines  that  lift  this  poem  to  the  highest 
plane  of  inspiration  are  those  in  lament 
over  the  sister  who  passed  from  life  and 
thought  only  a  year  before.  These  are 
words  that  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  all 
readers  who  have  lost  one  near  and  dear. 
John  Bright,  the  most  eloquent  of  English 
parliamentary  speakers  of  the  last  century, 
declared  this  tribute  to  be  the  finest  he 
had  ever  read.  The  prelude  to  Among  the 
Hills  rises  to  rare  flights  in  its  pi&ure  of 
what  American  country  life  should  be.  In 
The  Tent  on  the  Beach  Whit  tier  produced 
a  poem  that  reveals  some  of  his  best  work. 
It  is  a  collection  of  short  poems  demon 
strating  Whittier's  easy  mastery  of  many 
forms  of  verse. 

Many  other  poems  of  Whittier's  deserve 
mention  here,  but  if  anyone  will  read  the 
poems  named  in  this  article,  he  will  be 
pretty  sure  to  keep  Whittier  on  his  book 
shelf  as  a  constant  companion.  From  no 
other  books  of  verse  can  one  get  surer  light 
on  the  blessings  that  come  from  unselfish 
love  and  kindly  thoughts  of  others,  or  a 
better  guide  to  the  beauties  of  nature  that 
keep  the  heart  young  and  the  mind  open 
to  all  the  sweet  influences  of  the  birds  and 
the  trees  and  all  growing  things. 

[94] 


THOREAU 

THE  PIONEER  WRITER 
ABOUT  NATURE 

THE  RECLUSE  OF  WALDEN  POND,  WHO 
FIRST  SHOWED  THE  WORLD  How  TO 
LIVE  THE  SIMPLE  LIFE  AND  How  TO 
ENJOY  NATURE. 

IT  is  only  within  the  last  decade  that  the 
full  stature  of  Henry  D.  Thoreau  has 
been  appreciated  or  his  services  as  an 
original  thinker  have  been  valued.  How- 
ells  says  of  his  Waldeni  "I  do  not  believe 
Tolstoi  himself  has  more  clearly  shown  the 
hollowness,  the  hopelessness,  the  unworthi- 
ness  of  the  life  of  the  world  than  Thoreau 
did  in  that  book."  Only  a  little  over  sixty 
years  ago  nature  study  was  unknown  in 
America,  and  to  Thoreau  belongs  the  dis 
tinction  of  being  the  pioneer  of  this  litera 
ture  of  life  in  the  open  air.  But  he  was 
far  more  than  a  remarkable  student  and 
observer  of  nature;  he  was  an  original 

[95] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

thinker  who  foretold  many  of  the  problems 
of  our  day,  especially  those  which  have 
arisen  from  the  congestion  of  thousands  of 
the  poor  in  all  large  American  cities. 
Above  all,  he  was  a  philosopher  who  car 
ried  the  doctrine  of  individuality  to  its 
extreme  limit  and  who  believed  that  a 
great  part  of  the  work  done  in  this  world 
is  wasted  because  its  results  are  spent  on 
food,  drink  and  raiment  that  are  not  neces 
sary  to  one's  comfort  or  happiness. 

Not  even  in  the  books  of  John  Muir  or 
John  Burroughs  will  one  find  such  pure 
enjoyment  of  mountain  scenery,  or  such 
awe  and  reverence  for  the  spirit  of  nature 
as  may  be  found  in  Thoreau's  records  of 
mountain  climbing  or  of  his  days  spent  in 
the  woods,  far  from  the  haunts  of  men. 
Many  have  imitated  Thoreau  in  his  search 
for  what  is  now  called  the  "simple  life," 
but  no  one  has  equaled  him  in  his  capacity 
for  absorbing  the  spirit  of  wild  nature  or 
his  contentment  with  solitary  life  in  the 
woods.  Companionship  means  so  much 
to  the  great  majority  of  people  that  they 
cannot  understand  a  man  whose  nature 
made  no  demand  for  any  associate  in  his 
tramps  or  any  sharer  in  his  rapture  over  a 
glorious  view  from  a  mountain  summit. 

[96] 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU 

IN   1854 

FROM  THE  CRAYON  DRAWING  BY  S.  W.  ROWSE 
IN  THE  CONCORD  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 


THE  PIONEER  WRITER  ABOUT  NATURE 

Thoreau  was  a  natural  hermit,  but  he 
was  eminently  companionable  when  any 
one  invaded  his  haunts.  His  nature  sim 
ply  ignored  the  usual  fondness  for  friends 
or  associates.  He  was  the  pioneer  in  a 
new  style  of  writing  about  nature,  but 
though  others  have  caught  much  of  his 
skill  in  making  the  woods  and  the  moun 
tains  real  to  their  readers,  they  could  not 
secure  that  subtle  element  of  personality 
which  colors  all  of  Thoreau's  work  and 
makes  it  unique. 

Many  lovers  of  nature  impress  one  as 
profoundly  affected  by  noble  scenery,  but 
still  one  fancies  that  these  excursions  into 
the  wild  life  are  simply  vacations  from 
prosaic  pursuits  in  the  big  cities.  Not  so 
with  Thoreau.  When  he  writes  about 
walking,  or  about  autumnal  tints,  or  about 
birds,  the  reader  knows  at  once  that  his 
conclusions  are  the  result  of  much  experi 
ence.  In  a  word,  his  mind  was  saturated 
with  many  impressions,  and  his  chief  labor 
seems  to  have  been  to  select  such  as  would 
prove  the  most  striking. 

For  months  Thoreau  studied  all  the 
birds  and  small  animals  that  frequented 
the  woods  in  which  he  built  his  cabin  on 
the  shore  of  Walden  pond.  When  he  made 

[971 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

notes  on  these  wild  creatures  they  repre 
sented  many  observations,  not  the  impres 
sions  of  a  pedestrian  who  passed  through 
this  part  of  Massachusetts  on  a  walking 
trip.  The  same  sureness  of  facl,  the  same 
reserve  of  knowledge,  is  seen  in  everything 
that  he  wrote.  Throughout  all  his  essays 
one  has  this  sense  of  being  admitted  to 
share  in  only  a  few  of  the  pleasures  of  this 
scholarly  recluse,  whose  eyes  were  as  keen 
as  those  of  the  professional  hunter,  but 
who  had  none  of  the  hunter's  lust  for  kill 
ing  the  wild  creatures  of  the  woods. 

As  Thoreau  had  unusual  gifts  as  a  writer, 
he  was  able  to  make  the  reader  see  what 
impressed  him.  Much  of  this  work  was 
in  the  form  of  elaborate  notes  and  journals 
left  behind  him,  for  Thoreau  was  one  of 
those  unhappy  authors  who  gained  no 
reputation  during  his  lifetime.  His  bril 
liant  work  fell  flat  because  the  public  of 
his  time  was  far  more  interested  in  such 
sentimental  rhapsodies  as  Chateaubriand 
poured  forth  in  Atala  or  Rousseau  in  his 
morbid  confessions  than  in  the  real  impres 
sions  of  a  genuine  student  of  nature. 
Four  years  after  the  issue  of  A  Week  on 
the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers  Thoreau 
records  with  grim  humor  the  fad  that  he 


THE  PIONEER  WRITER  ABOUT  NATURE 

bought  703  copies  out  of  an  edition  of 
1000  and  stacked  them  up  in  his  chamber 
in  a  pile  half  as  high  as  his  head.  "This/' 
he  says,  "is  authorship;  these  are  the  work 
of  my  brain."  Yet  no  sooner  was  he  dead 
than  all  the  work  which  he  left  behind 
him,  including  a  half-dozen  volumes  of 
journals,  was  printed  and  found  thousands 
of  readers.  Although  most  of  his  writing 
was  done  in  the  forties  of  the  last  century, 
it  is  as  readable  today  as  when  it  was  first 
written. 

The  closest  friend  of  Thoreau  was  Emer 
son,  although  the  Sage  of  Concord  was 
perhaps  his  sharpest  critic,  and  it  was 
Emerson  who  furnished  the  biographical 
sketch  which  prefaced  the  first  complete 
edition  of  Thoreau's  works.  Thoreau,  of 
mixed  Saxon  and  French  blood,  was  born 
in  Concord  in  1817,  and  was  graduated 
from  Harvard  in  his  twentieth  year.  His 
father  was  a  manufacturer  of  lead  pencils, 
but  the  son  showed  no  inclination  to  enter 
upon  any  commercial  pursuit. 

After  six  years  devoted  to  teaching, 
Thoreau  decided  to  live  in  the  woods  and 
do  only  so  much  work  as  would  suffice  to 
maintain  him  in  comfort.  He  built  a  cabin 
on  Walden  pond,  near  Concord,  and  for 

[99] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

two  years  led  the  simple  life.  His  wants 
were  so  few  that  he  was  able  to  live  well 
for  two  years  on  less  money  than  one  in  a 
city  would  spend  in  a  month.  His  time 
he  devoted  to  study  and  reading  and 
to  patient  observation  of  the  birds  and 
animals  about  his  house.  Yet  his  life  in 
this  cabin  was  never  squalid. 

It  is  evident  that  Thoreau  often  irritated 
Emerson  by  his  passion  for  controversy. 
Thoreau  accepted  nothing  for  granted,  and 
he  seemed  to  have  a  mania  for  protesting 
against  all  that  others  accepted.  One  of 
his  fads  was  the  unwholesome  life  of  the 
city;  another  was  the  small  value  of  a 
college  education.  He  had  no  genius  for 
friendship.  In  fact,  one  of  his  friends 
summed  up  his  unsocial  nature  in  this 
way:  "I  love  Henry,  but  I  cannot  like 
him;  and  as  for  taking  his  arm,  I  should 
as  soon  think  of  taking  the  arm  of  an  elm 


tree." 


In  Walden  will  be  found  the  best  reve 
lation  of  Thoreau's  personality.  The  man 
was  absolutely  independent.  As  Emerson 
said,  he  had  no  passions,  no  desires,  no 
ambitions;  he  was  sufficient  unto  himself; 
he  never  felt  the  need  of  companionship. 
Every  day  saw  him  take  four  or  five  hours 

[100] 


THOREAU'S  COVE,  WALDEN  POND 
SHOWING  INDIAN  PATH  ALONG  SHORE 


THE  PIONEER  WRITER  ABOUT  NATURE 

of  good,  wholesome  exercise  in  the  open 
air.  Then  he  returned  to  his  books  or  his 
writing  with  the  same  zest  that  a  city  man 
returns  to  work  after  social  pleasures  or 
the  theatre.  His  hunger  was  satisfied  with 
the  simplest  food,  which  he  prepared  him 
self.  He  devoted  much  time  to  the  patient 
study  of  all  the  wild  creatures  that  fre 
quented  the  woods  in  which  he  had  built 
his  house.  He  sets  down  minutely  the 
cost  of  his  living  and  finds  that  for  six 
months  he  had  actually  lived  for  a  sum 
which  would  not  have  sustained  him  one 
week  in  any  big  city. 

Walden  is  Thoreau's  best  work,  but  there 
is  much  readable  matter  in  'The  Maine 
Woods,  Cape  Cod  and  Excursions.  Tho- 
reau  was  a  natural  writer,  with  a  genius 
for  style  and  with  that  devotion  to  detail 
which  makes  his  journals  such  good  read 
ing.  Here  is  an  extract  from  his  essay  on 
Walking: 

Where  is  the  literature  which  gives  expression  to  Nature? 
He  would  be  a  poet  who  could  impress  the  winds  and  streams 
into  his  service,  to  speak  for  him;  who  transplanted  words  to 
his  pages  with  earth  adhering  to  their  roots;  whose  words  were 
so  true  and  fresh  and  natural  that  they  would  appear  to  expand 
like  the  buds  at  the  approach  of  spring,  though  they  lay  half 
smothered  between  two  musty  leaves  in  a  library.  *  *  *  I 
do  not  know  any  poetry  to  quote  which  adequately  expresses 
this  yearning  for  the  Wild.  Approached  from  this  side,  the  best 
poetry  is  tame. 

[101] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Thoreau  wrote  some  poetry,  but  it  bears 
a  striking  resemblance  to  Emerson's  verse, 
and  it  has  not  appealed  to  the  public. 
Among  his  notes  of  journeys  and  obser 
vations  Thoreau  was  fond  of  interpolating 
his  views  on  transcendental  philosophy. 
He  was  a  New  England  pagan,  with  abso 
lutely  no  reverence  for  religious  authority 
and  with  apparently  little  interest  in  any 
religious  dodlrine.  This  mental  attitude 
irritated  Emerson,  who  could  not  conceive 
of  any  human  being  without  a  strong 
curiosity  about  the  purpose  of  the  universe 
and  a  great  hunger  to  know  something  of 
the  future  life. 

Thoreau's  fame  is  sure  because  he  wrote 
only  of  the  things  that  he  loved,  and  his 
style  is  far  finer  and  richer  than  the  style 
of  most  of  his  famous  contemporaries.  Men 
like  Alcott  looked  upon  Thoreau  as  defi 
cient  in  the  essential  qualities  of  a  great 
writer,  but  the  years  have  brought  their 
revenges,  and  today  Thoreau  is  read  by 
thousands  who  know  the  leader  of  Trans 
cendentalism  only  as  a  name. 


102  ] 


FRANCIS 

PARKMAN'S  HISTORICAL 
WORK 

ALTHOUGH  HALF  BLIND  AND  AN  INVALID 
HE  DESCRIBED  THE  LONG  STRUGGLE 
BETWEEN  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND  FOR 
CANADA. 

OF  ALL  American  historians  Francis  Park- 
man  seems  to  me  to  deserve  first 
place  because  of  a  peculiar  combination  of 
gifts  and  because  he  had  the  good  fortune 
to  select  for  his  subject  the  most  pidhir- 
esque  episode  in  our  history.  Parkman 
himself  is  always  associated  in  my  mind 
with  Stevenson  as  a  literary  worker.  No 
two  men  ever  differed  more  widely  in 
character  or  in  work;  but  both  were 
invalids,  both  struggled  against  tremen 
dous  handicaps  of  physical  disability  and 
both  produced  an  amount  of  good  literature 
that  would  have  done  credit  to  the  strong 
est  man  of  letters.  Parkman,  in  fact,  was 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

in  worse  case  than  the  author  of  Treasure 
Island,  because  in  addition  to  his  other 
physical  ailments  he  was  practically  blind 
for  years  and  was  forced  to  depend  upon 
others  to  do  his  reading.  Nearly  all  his 
work  was  dictated,  yet  it  bears  no  evidence 
of  such  literary  method.  At  one  time  his 
literary  work  was  set  aside  for  several 
years  while  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
culture  of  roses.  It  takes  a  robust  will 
and  iron  determination  to  pursue  a  literary 
scheme  in  the  face  of  constant  illness;  yet 
this  Parkman  accomplished  with  so  little 
outward  sign  of  suffering  that  John  Fiske, 
one  of  his  friends  who  met  him  frequently 
at  club  dinners,  never  knew  that  he  was 
an  invalid  until  after  his  death. 

It  is  seldom  that  a  college  boy  in  his 
sophomore  year  decides  definitely  upon  his 
life  work  and  begins  to  prepare  himself  for 
it.  Yet  this  was  what  Parkman  did  at 
Harvard  when  he  was  eighteen  years  old. 
He  came  to  the  conclusion  that  he  would 
write  the  history  of  the  conflict  in  America 
between  France  and  England  —  the  "Old 
French  War,"  as  it  was  called,  which  ended 
in  the  conquest  of  Canada.  This  was 
really  the  history  of  the  American  forest, 
which  from  his  boyhood  had  a  strong  fasci- 

[104] 


FRANCIS  PARKMAN 
FROM  A  DAGUERREOTYPE  TAKEN  ABOUT  1844 


FRANCIS  PARKMAN'S  HISTORICAL  WORK 

nation  for  Parkman.  To  write  this  history 
adequately  demanded  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  Indian  tribes,  then  pushed  westward 
beyond  the  Mississippi,  and  of  the  Cana 
dian  habitant  and  voyageur.  During  his 
college  vacations  and  for  several  years  after 
Parkman  devoted  himself  to  gaining  first 
hand  information  in  regard  to  the  scenes 
of  this  great  conflict,  and  the  Indians  who 
were  the  most  picturesque  actors  in  the 
struggle. 

Parkman  came  of  good  old  Devonshire 
stock,  his  ancestors  migrating  to  New 
England  from  the  same  shire  that  produced 
Raleigh,  Gilbert,  Drake,  Hawkins,  and 
other  great  English  adventurers.  All  his 
portraits  show  a  massive  chin  which  con 
trasts  strangely  with  his  refined  face. 
This  chin  betrayed  his  leading  trait  —  an 
iron  determination  which  lifelong  disease 
and  pain  could  not  shake.  Parkman  has 
been  well  described  as  a  "passionate 
Puritan."  He  had  all  the  stoicism  of  the 
Puritan,  with  an  eager  spirit  which  flamed 
into  sudden  enthusiasms.  A  natural  aris 
tocrat,  this  feeling  did  not  breed  any  con 
tempt  for  the  working  class,  but  rather  a 
determination  to  prove  that  not  even  ill 
ness , should  exempt  him  from  a  man's  work 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

in  the  world.  His  favorite  book  was  the 
Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  He  was 
as  great  a  stoic  as  the  Roman  Emperor, 
and  much  of  his  outlook  on  life  was  purely 
pagan,  though  no  man  had  keener  sym 
pathy  with  the  poor  and  the  unfortunate. 

When  a  gymnasium  was  opened  in  Har 
vard  during  his  junior  year,  young  Park- 
man  made  the  great  mistake  of  trying  to 
crowd  into  six  months  the  athletic  work 
which  should  have  been  spread  over  six 
years.  He  injured  his  health  so  badly 
that  he  was  unable  to  begin  his  senior  year 
with  his  class.  Instead  he  spent  the  time 
abroad,  but  returned  in  time  to  take  his 
degree  and  begin  the  study  of  law.  The 
following  year  Parkman  took  a  trip  to 
Detroit  to  study  the  scenes  of  The  Con 
spiracy  of  Pontiac,  the  first  of  his  studies 
of  the  great  conflict  between  the  French 
and  the  English  for  this  huge  Western 
Empire.  He  interviewed  everyone  of 
antiquarian  tastes,  made  topographical 
studies,  and  gathered  a  mass  of  notes 
which  gave  life  to  his  history. 

This  trip  showed  Parkman  that  he  must 
go  further  west  if  he  would  see  the  Indian 
before  the  vices  of  civilization  robbed  him 
of  his  ancient  traits  and  customs.  So  the 

[106] 


FRANCIS  PARK.MAN 

FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  TAKEN  IN  1882 
COPYRIGHT  1897  BV  LITTLE,  BROWN  &  COMPANY 


FRANCIS  PARKMAN'S  HISTORICAL  WORK 

next  year,  in  company  with  Quincy  A. 
Shaw,  a  fellow-enthusiast  in  the  study  of 
Cooper  and  Catlin,  Parkman  set  out  for 
a  trip  to  California  and  Oregon.  This  was 
in  the  Spring  of  1846,  three  years  before 
the  great  gold  rush  to  California.  The 
whole  country  west  of  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains  was  then  the  territory  of  Oregon,  and 
Parkman  saw  thoroughly  only  the  region 
now  known  as  Nebraska,  Colorado  and 
Wyoming.  He  and  Shaw  lived  with  the 
Ogillallah  tribe  and  accompanied  the  chiefs 
on  hunting  expeditions  and  even  upon  a 
war  raid  on  the  Snake  Indians.  It  was  a 
fine  opportunity  to  study  the  Indian  as  he 
lived,  but  it  cost  Parkman  very  dear,  for 
living  exclusively  on  a  meat  diet  he  was 
attacked  by  dysentery  and  reduced  to 
great  weakness.  Only  his  iron  will  kept 
him  in  the  saddle  and  led  him  to  undertake 
alone  a  hard  trip  in  order  to  see  two  Indian 
tribes  on  the  warpath.  He  accumulated 
a  mass  of  material  and  in  early  fall  returned 
to  the  East. 

The  poor  food,  exposure  and  violent 
exertion  of  this  trip  resulted  in  an  affedion 
of  the  eyes  which  threatened  blindness. 
For  two  years  Parkman  was  greatly 
reduced,  but  during  this  heavy  siege  of 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

illness  he  di dated  Tbe  Oregon  Trait y  the 
fine  record  of  his  Western  trip,  which 
aroused  little  interest  at  the  time,  although 
it  has  since  been  recognized  as  one  of  the 
best  studies  of  the  blanket  Indians  of  the 
plains. 

From  this  time  the  story  of  Parkman's 
life  is  the  record  of  an  unwearied  fight 
against  disease  and  pain.  In  the  spring  of 
1848,  when  his  sufferings  were  at  their 
worst,  he  decided  to  begin  the  story  of 
The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac  at  Detroit, 
which,  had  it  succeeded,  would  have 
changed  the  history  of  France  in  the  New 
World.  To  permit  him  to  write  he  had 
a  wired  frame  constructed,  of  the  size  of 
a  sheet  of  letter-paper,  with  a  pasteboard 
back.  The  paper  was  inserted  between 
the  pasteboard  and  the  wires  and,  guided 
by  these  wires,  Parkman  could  write  with 
a  black  lead  crayon,  with  closed  eyes. 
Part  of  the  first  volume  of  his  history  was 
composed  in  this  way  and  part  was  dic 
tated.  The  authorities  which  he  had 
gathered  were  read  to  him.  In  this  pain 
ful  way,  during  two  and  a  half  years,  the 
book  was  slowly  prepared.  It  betrays  no 
sign  of  the  author's  hard  work.  In  pictur 
esque  description,  in  freshness  of  interest^ 

[108.1 


FRANCIS  PARKMAN'S  HISTORICAL  WORK 

and  in  a  certain  charm  of  style,  it  scored 
a  great  success.  The  best  critics  declared 
that  the  book  was  as  readable  as  a  novel, 
because  Parkman's  Indians  were  real  flesh 
and  blood,  and  Pontiac  was  a  leader  who 
aroused  the  reader's  keen  interest. 

After  the  publication  of  his  first  book 
troubles  fell  upon  Parkman  thick  and  fast. 
He  lost  his  wife  and  his  little  boy  and  was 
left  with  two  young  daughters.  His  mala 
dies  increased  so  that  he  could  do  no  work 
for  two  years.  But  his  fortitude  remained 
unbroken  and  at  his  country  home  at 
Jamaica  Pond  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
culture  of  roses.  When,  finally,  he  was 
able  to  resume  his  literary  work  he  found 
that  his  rose  garden  had  saved  him  from 
bitterness. 

So  he  set  about  his  chosen  work  which 
engrossed  him  for  nearly  thirty  years. 
The  first  volume  was  tfhe  Pioneers  of 
France  in  the  New  World  and  this  was 
followed  by  tfhe  Jesuits  in  North  America, 
La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great 
West,  The  Old  Regime,  Frontenac,  A  Half 
Century  of  Conflict  and  Montcalm  and 
Wolfe.  For  each  of  these  Parkman  made 
laborious  researches,  having  thousands  of 
pages  of  manuscript  copied  from  the 

[109] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

archives  in  Paris  and  London  and  from 
letters  found  in  Montreal  and  Quebec. 
He  read  all  the  Jesuit  Relations  —  one 
hundred  volumes  of  the  manuscript  reports 
of  French  missionaries  in  Canada  to  the 
home  office  in  Paris. 

The  reader  who  does  not  know  Parkman 
may  begin  safely  with  any  of  the  series, 
but  I  would  recommend  either  Pontiac  or 
Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  after  a  reading  of 
'The  Oregon  'Trail.  In  any  of  Parkman's 
histories  the  reader  will  be  impressed  by 
the  clearness  of  the  narrative,  the  splendid 
portraits  of  the  great  chara&ers,  the 
graphic  pictures  of  wild  life  in  the  Western 
wilderness  and  the  scholarly  fair-minded 
conclusions  that  he  reaches  after  close 
study  of  all  the  fads.  His  sympathies, 
naturally,  were  with  the  English,  and  he 
came  in  for  some  sharp  criticism  from 
French-Canadians,  but  he  had  warm 
friends  among  this  race  who  believed  in 
his  impartiality.  From  English  critics 
Parkman  received  unstinted  praise.  To 
the  sympathetic  reader  Parkman's  real  self 
will  be  seen  in  the  ardor  with  which  he 
described  the  bravery  and  endurance  of 
such  heroes  as  Champlain  and  La  Salle, 
Tonty  and  Wolfe. 

[no] 


MARK  TWAIN 

OUR  FINEST 

HUMORIST 

SPRUNG  FROM  POVERTY,  HE  WON  FAME 
BY  "THE  INNOCENTS  ABROAD"  —  His 
BEST  BOOK  "THE  ADVENTURES  OF 
HUCKLEBERRY  FINN." 

IF  a  canvas  of  intelligent  readers  were 
made  in  any  Western  State  today,  the 
first  place  among  American  men  of  letters 
would  be  given  by  popular  vote  to  Mark 
Twain.  The  East  does  not  yet  hold  him 
in  the  same  high  regard,  but  every  year 
sees  a  gain  in  his  popularity  with  the  read 
ing  public.  More  American  than  Whitman 
himself,  he  appeals  to  a  very  wide  audience 
because  he  is  not  only  the  ablest  of  our 
humorists,  but  in  his  later  years  he  proved 
that  he  was  a  novelist  of  the  first  rank  as 
well  as  an  historian  and  a  philosopher. 
It  took  Mark  Twain  many  years  to  live 
down  the  idea  that  he  was  simply  a  teller 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

of  funny  stones;  but  Huckleberry  Finn  and 
the  Recollections  of  Joan  of  Arc  abundantly 
proved  that  he  was  far  more  than  a 
humorist. 

In  no  other  country  could  Mark  Twain 
have  reached  such  eminence  as  he  enjoyed 
during  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life.  It  is 
a  far  cry  from  the  barefooted  boy  of  Han 
nibal,  Missouri,  to  the  first  citizen  of  New 
York.  Occasionally  in  Europe  is  seen  such 
a  spectacular  rise  as  that  of  Lloyd-George, 
but  in  the  main  the  political  and  literary 
honors  in  the  Old  World  belong  to  those 
born  to  ample  leisure  and  fortune.  Had 
Mark  Twain  been  born  abroad  he  would 
probably  have  remained  a  printer  or  a 
river  pilot.  In  this  country,  where  oppor 
tunity  beckons  to  everyone  who  has  brains 
and  ambition,  Mark  Twain  dropped  pilot 
ing  and  took  up  newspaper  work,  which 
proved,  as  in  the  case  of  many  American 
authors,  the  stepping-stone  to  success. 

The  life  of  Mark  Twain  affords  a  good 
example  of  the  splendid  opportunities  in 
America  open  to  those  who  have  the  ability 
to  grasp  them.  Mark  Twain  had  some 
thing  more  than  mere  literary  talent;  he 
had  genius  of  the  highest  order,  for  only 
genius  will  explain  the  astonishing  develop- 

[112] 


MARK  TWAIN 

FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH.     COPYRIGHT  1905  BY 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


OUR  FINEST  HUMORIST 

ment  of  his  literary  faculty  in  an  environ 
ment  which  was  distinctly  hostile  to  any 
imaginative  work.  The  poor  boy  of 
Hannibal,  Missouri,  had  no  advantages 
beyond  those  of  his  companions,  but  like 
most  of  the  famous  American  writers  he 
was  a  tireless  reader  and  early  in  life  he 
drifted  into  a  printing  office,  that  training 
school  which  inspired  Whitman,  Howells 
and  Bret  Harte.  There  he  found  the  tools 
which  he  learned  to  use  so  deftly;  but  his 
was  no  sudden  success.  Probably  the 
rough  life  of  Nevada  and  California  in 
early  mining  days  served  to  develop  his 
humorous  ability  and  The  Jumping  Frog 
of  Calaveras,  a  very  amusing  story  which 
he  heard  told  by  a  miner  in  the  California 
foothills,  first  made  his  name  known  from 
Atlantic  to  Pacific.  Then  came  lecturing 
and  the  Great  Opportunity.  This  was 
nothing  less  than  the  first  organized  pleas 
ure  excursion  to  the  Old  World.  Out  of 
it  came  The  Innocents  Abroad,  which  set  a 
new  record  for  books  of  travel,  and  estab 
lished  Mark  Twain's  fame  as  a  humorist. 
This  book  should  have  demonstrated 
that  its  author  was  among  the  greatest  of 
prose  writers,  because  scattered  through  it 
are  brilliant  pages  of  description  and  fine 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

bits  of  philosophy,  all  couched  in  a  style 
that  is  true,  strong  and  original.  But  the 
great  public  paid  no  attention  to  anything 
except  the  jokes  and  the  delightfully  irrev 
erent  passages  in  which  this  new  humorist 
flayed  the  travel  writers  of  the  old  school. 
Many  since  Mark  Twain's  day  have  ex 
pressed  their  lack  of  appreciation  of  the 
Old  Masters,  but  it  remained  for  him  to 
kill  by  savage  ridicule  the  absurd  affec 
tations  of  those  who  simply  followed  in  the 
footsteps  of  former  critics.  No  one  can 
read  the  chapters  on  the  Holy  Land  with 
out  being  impressed  by  Mark  Twain's 
graphic  pictures  of  sacred  shrines  now  in 
the  hands  of  the  Unspeakable  Turk.  These 
chapters  reveal  the  author's  genuine  rever 
ence  as  well  as  his  close  study  of  the  Bible. 
Years  after,  Mark  Twain  wrote  A  'Tramp 
Abroad,  in  which  he  followed  the  route  of 
his  first  pilgrimage,  but  though  this  book 
is  written  with  more  artistic  finish,  it  lacks 
the  rollicking  fun  and  the  spontaneity  of 
the  early  work. 

Life  on  the  Mississippi  —  an  autobiog 
raphy  with  some  imaginative  touches — is 
one  of  Mark  Twain's  great  books.  As 
readable  as  a  novel,  it  takes  you  back  to 
those  old  days  when  passenger  boats  ran 


OUR  FINEST  HUMORIST 

up  and  down  the  great  river  from  St.  Louis 
to  New  Orleans,  and  when  the  pilot  of  one 
of  these  fine  steamers  was  as  great  a  man 
as  the  driver  of  a  six-horse  stage  coach  in 
Nevada.  You  see  at  once  that  Mark 
Twain  loved  this  life  on  the  river  and  that 
it  is  pure  joy  for  him  to  tell  of  his  hard 
training  as  a  cub  pilot  and  of  the  many 
episodes  that  marked  his  life  at  the  wheel. 
With  consummate  art  he  has  told  this 
story  of  a  strange  life,  so  that  today  it  is 
one  of  his  most  popular  books  in  this 
country  as  well  as  in  France  and  Germany. 
The  Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn 
followed  in  the  next  season  —  two  master 
pieces  in  successive  years.  'Tom  Sawyer  is 
a  book  for  boys,  although  thousands  of 
mature  readers  have  enjoyed  it.  It  is  a 
faithful  picture  of  the  author's  boyhood  in 
a  sleepy  little  Mississippi  river  town,  and 
as  a  study  of  boy  psychology  it  has  never 
been  surpassed;  but  it  is  not  literature  in 
the  same  sense  that  The  Adventures  of 
Huckleberry  Finn  is  literature.  Many 
readers  bracket  these  two  books  together, 
but  they  have  little  in  common  except 
their  literary  art.  All  the  details  of 
Huckleberry  Finn  serve  to  paint  the  most 
graphic  picture  ever  drawn  of  life  in  the 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Southern  States  before  the  War.  The  free 
ing  of  the  negro  Jim  from  the  calaboose, 
the  floating  of  Huck  and  Jim  down  the 
Mississippi  on  their  raft,  the  advent  of  the 
two  tramps  and  their  remarkable  adven 
tures,  the  episode  of  the  terrible  blood 
feud  —  all  these  go  to  make  up  a  unique 
book.  It  was  literary  genius  that  impelled 
Mark  Twain  to  write  this  book  without 
elaborating  the  great  scenes.  This  makes 
the  Grangerford-Shepperdson  family  feud 
one  of  the  most  impressive  things  in  all 
literature.  One  can  fancy  the  fun  Mark 
got  out  of  the  tricks  of  the  Duke  and  the 
King,  who  are  among  the  most  lovable 
rogues  in  picaresque  fidion.  If  you  think 
my  praise  of  this  book  too  high  take  down 
the  book  and  read  it  again.  I  think  you 
will  agree  with  me  that  as  pure  literature 
it  is  worthy  of  a  place  among  the  great 
books  of  the  world. 

Mark  Twain  always  had  a  keen  desire 
to  show  that  the  "good  old  times"  did  not 
compare  with  the  present  age.  This 
resulted  in  two  very  attractive  stories  — 
The  Prince  and  the  Pauper  and  A  Connecti 
cut  Yankee  in  King  Arthur  s  Court.  The 
first  is  a  delightful  romance  full  of  real 
pathos  and  humanity,  which  has  warmed 

[116] 


OUR  FINEST  HUMORIST 

the  heart  of  many  youthful  readers.  The 
second  is  Mark  Twain's  tremendous  on 
slaught  upon  British  class  tyranny  and 
time-honored  privilege.  Through  the  per 
son  of  the  Connecticut  Yankee  the  Amer 
ican  vents  his  hatred  of  many  British 
institutions,  but  he  is  so  extravagant  in 
his  language  that  he  defeats  his  own  pur 
pose.  The  book,  which  should  have  been 
one  of  Mark  Twain's  best,  is  really  one  of 
his  worst  because  of  its  many  artistic 
blemishes. 

The  great  romance  in  Mark  Twain's  life 
was  his  passion  for  Joan  of  Arc.  When  a 
boy  he  picked  up  in  the  street  a  scrap  of 
paper  containing  an  outline  of  the  life  and 
the  terrible  tragedy  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans, 
and  this  incited  him  to  read  everything  he 
could  find  about  her.  Twelve  years  he 
devoted  to  reading  and  research  and  two 
years  to  the  actual  writing  of  the  Recol 
lections  of  Joan  of  Arc.  The  result  is  not 
his  best  book,  as  he  fondly  imagined, 
because  his  genius  did  not  move  as  freely 
in  the  past  as  in  the  present,  but  it  is  a 
splendid  historical  picture,  full  of  that 
spiritual  power  which  will  make  it  endure 
as  long  as  the  language  in  which  it  was 
written. 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Of  Clemens,  the  man,  as  contrasted 
with  Mark  Twain,  the  author,  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  say  that  he  developed  with  the 
years  from  a  rather  hard,  irreverent,  fre 
quently  cruel  humorist  into  one  of  the 
wisest  and  most  lovable  of  men.  Much 
of  this  refinement  was  due  to  the  daily 
influence  of  the  wife  whom  he  adored  and 
of  association  with  men  like  Howells, 
Warner  and  the  Rev.  Joseph  Twichell, 
who  was  his  constant  companion.  No 
American  author  during  his  life  enjoyed 
his  popularity  more  than  Mark  Twain,  and 
none  was  so  singularly  honored  in  England. 
His  later  years  were  clouded  with  many 
sorrows,  but  through  all  he  preserved  the 
sweetness  of  his  nature.  To  meet  many 
authors  is  a  keen  disappointment,  as  they 
reveal  petty  traits  and  unlovely  characters; 
but  no  one  ever  met  Mark  Twain  without 
being  impressed  by  his  great  sincerity  and 
his  goodness  of  heart. 


[118] 


BRET  HARTE'S 

CALIFORNIA  TALES 

AND  POEMS 

PIONEER  LIFE  AMONG  GOLD  MINERS 
MIRRORED  BY  A  MASTER  OF  THE 
SHORT  STORY  —  ONE  OF  THE  GREAT 
ARTISTS  IN  VERSE. 

BRET  HARTE  is  the  one  writer  of  un 
doubted  genius  who  made  California 
and  its  pioneers  known  around  the  world. 
His  creative  activity  ran  over  forty-five 
years,  yet  in  all  that  time  he  seldom  chose 
any  other  scene  for  his  stories  than  the 
early  California  which  he  knew  so  well. 
Only  one  side  of  that  pioneer  life  he 
painted  with  such  remarkable  clearness 
and  force  that  every  reader  saw  it  with  his 
eyes.  It  was  the  purely  adventurous  life 
of  the  California  mining  camps  that  Bret 
Harte  exploited  with  the  same  fidelity  that 
Kipling  has  pictured  the  life  of  the  English 
man  in  India.  The  miner  who  varies 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

feverish  work  with  long  bouts  at  the  faro 
table,  the  professional  gambler,  the  stage- 
driver,  the  lawyer,  the  dance-hall  keeper, 
the  harlot  and  the  Chinaman  —  these  are 
Bret  Harte's  leading  types.  He  makes 
them  all  picturesque,  but  in  none  of  his 
stories  does  he  give  any  glimpse  of  that 
other  life  led  by  many  pioneers  —  that 
life  of  hard  work,  careful  saving  and  ulti 
mate  wealth  which  led  to  the  unparalleled 
development  of  California.  He  never 
touches  on  the  men  who  built  schools  and 
churches  and  laid  the  foundations  of  New 
England  life  in  a  new  and  sunnier  land. 

Bret  Harte  was  largely  self-educated. 
Forced  by  the  death  of  his  father  to  work 
in  an  office  at  the  early  age  of  nine  years, 
he  gained  by  reading  what  ordinary  school 
boys  acquire  by  painstaking  study.  At 
eighteen  he  left  Albany,  his  native  city, 
and  went  to  California,  where  his  mother 
had  married  again.  It  was  his  good  for 
tune  to  be  a  school-teacher  and  an  express 
messenger  in  the  foothill  counties  of  Cali 
fornia  in  the  late  fifties  —  the  period 
which  witnessed  the  decline  and  end  of 
placer  mining.  Less  than  a  year  Harte 
spent  in  this  land  of  the  pioneer  miners, 
yet  in  that  short  time  he  gained  impressions 

[120] 


'••--••'  '••'.'.•;:' 

BRET  HARTE 
FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  TAKEN  BY  HOLLYER  IN  1896 


BRET  HARTE'S  TALES  AND  POEMS 

of  scenes  and  characters  upon  which  he 
drew  for  over  forty  years,  while  working 
in  an  alien  land  among  alien  people.  In 
one  of  his  reminiscent  sketches  he  speaks 
of  his  "eager  absorption  of  the  strange  life 
around  me  and  a  photographic  sensitive 
ness  to  certain  scenes  and  incidents.*' 
This  is  as  good  a  description  as  has  ever 
been  given  of  creative  literary  genius. 

Like  many  other  American  authors,  Bret 
Harte  became  a  compositor,  and  it  was 
this  work  in  a  printing  office  which  stimu 
lated  him  to  write.  He  finally  drifted  to 
San  Francisco  and  there,  after  several 
ventures  on  weekly  newspapers,  he  became 
the  editor  of  a  new  magazine,  the  OVER 
LAND  MONTHLY.  To  the  second  number 
of  this  magazine  Harte  contributed  The 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  a  short  story  brim- 
full  of  the  dare-devil,  hilarious  spirit  of 
early  California  mining  days.  The  broad 
humor,  the  defiance  of  all  social  conven 
tions,  the  mingled  pathos  and  art  of  this 
story,  attracted  the  American  reading  pub 
lic  and  when  this  story  was  followed  by 
another  short  masterpiece,  The  Outcasts 
of  Poker  Flat  and  a  striking  humorous 
poem,  The  Heathen  Chinee,  Harte  gained 
a  national  reputation  almost  in  a  day. 

[12!] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

A  Boston  publishing  house  paid  him 
$10,000  for  the  exclusive  right  to  every 
thing  which  he  should  write  in  a  year.  If 
the  firm  had  known  him  better  it  would 
never  have  made  such  a  bargain,  for  he 
did  little  for  the  money.  For  several  years 
he  wrote  short  stories  and  sketches  and 
lectured  throughout  the  country.  Then 
he  secured  a  consulship  at  Crefeld,  Ger 
many,  and  soon  after  a  similar  post  at 
Glasgow.  Seven  years  of  this  consular 
service  sufficed.  Thereafter  he  lived  in 
London  and  produced  about  a  book  a  year 
for  many  years.  Exile  from  California 
seemed  to  lend  force  to  his  imagination, 
for  some  of  his  best  work  was  done  in  his 
later  years. 

The  poetical  output  of  Bret  Harte  was 
comparatively  small,  but  this  verse  is  of 
high  quality.  Like  his  prose  it  reveals  the 
hand  of  the  master-craftsman.  Many  of 
the  Spanish  legends  of  early  California 
Harte  has  put  into  beautiful  verse.  His 
is  the  best  bit  of  poetry  on  San  Francisco 
and  his  is  also  the  finest  poetical  tribute 
on  the  death  of  Dickens.  The  Heathen 
Chinee  —  the  most  famous  of  Harte's 
poems  —  was  written  in  the  metre  of 
Swinburne's  Atalanta  in  Calydon,  which 

[122] 


FACSIMILE  OF  A  PAGE  OF  THE  MANUSCRIPT  OF  THE 

FAMOUS  POEM  "THE  HEATHEN  CHINEE" 

BY  BRET  HARTE 


BRET  HARTE'S  TALES  AND  POEMS 

has  since  become  popular  with  humorous 
bards. 

The  best  way  to  make  the  acquaintance 
of  Bret  Harte  is  through  ¥he  Luck  of 
Roaring  Camp  and  Other  Sketches.  These 
short  stories  are  all  in  perfect  form.  My 
favorite  is  The  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat, 
which  tells  of  the  adventures  of  four 
disreputables  who  have  been  evicted  from 
the  mining  camp  of  Poker  Flat.  They 
expect  to  cross  the  mountain  divide  and 
reach  a  neighboring  camp,  but  Uncle  Billy, 
a  hanger-on  about  saloons,  smells  the  com 
ing  snowstorm  and  deserts  his  companions 
in  the  night,  taking  the  pack-animals  and 
most  of  the  provisions.  John  Oakhurst,  a 
professional  gambler,  is  left  with  two 
women,  Old  Mother  Shipton  and  a  hand 
some  damsel,  known  as  "The  Duchess." 
The  outcasts  are  joined  by  a  young  couple 
who  have  eloped  and  are  on  their  way  to 
Poker  Flat  to  be  married.  Oakhurst 
knows  that  their  fate  is  sealed,  as  the  first 
snowfall  in  the  Sierra  is  usually  heavy,  but 
he  keeps  this  knowledge  from  his  com 
panions,  as  well  as  any  revelations  about 
the  character  of  the  outcasts  from  the  two 
innocents.  The  story  of  this  camp  among 
the  snows  is  beautifully  told,  with  many 

[123] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

humorous  touches,  such  as  the  tale  of  the 
Iliad  related  by  the  young  rustic  who 
refers  to  the  swift-footed  Achilles  as  "Ash- 
heels."  The  other  campers  perish  of  cold 
and  hunger,  but  Oakhurst's  body  is  found 
near  by,  with  a  derringer  bullet  through 
the  brain,  and  these  last  words,  written  on 
the  deuce  of  clubs,  pinned  to  a  pine  tree 
with  his  bowie  knife  —  "Struck  a  streak  of 
bad  luck  and  passed  in  his  checks." 

Tennessee's  Partner  is  another  perfect 
short  story  which  relates  the  fidelity  of  a 
miner  for  his  partner,  although  that  part 
ner  had  stolen  his  wife.  Tennessee  is  the 
evil  partner,  but  when  he  returned  to  the 
lonely  cabin  after  this  escapade,  he  was 
forgiven.  Seized  by  a  Vigilance  Committee 
for  holding  up  a  man  on  the  stage  road, 
he  is  being  given  a  fair  trial  when  the  part 
ner  appears  and  pouring  all  of  his  gold-dust 
on  the  table  offers  it  as  a  ransom  for 
Tennessee.  This  attempt  to  bribe  Judge 
Lynch  proved  fatal  to  the  accused  man 
and  he  was  promptly  hanged.  Then  came 
the  faithful  partner  with  his  little  donkey 
and  cart  containing  the  home-made  coffin. 
He  cut  down  the  body  of  his  friend  and 
carried  it  away  in  the  coffin  for  burial. 
The  story  is  an  idyl  of  fidelity  that  is 


BRET  HARTE'S  TALES  AND  POEMS 

stronger  than  death  and  it  is  told  with  a 
simple  pathos  that  is  never  theatrical. 
Observe  the  last  page  of  this  story,  giving 
the  account  of  the  partner's  death,  with 
its  touches  of  rare  pathos. 

The  works  of  Bret  Harte  fill  nineteen 
volumes,  of  which  only  two  are  devoted 
to  subjects  outside  of  California.  Harte 
was  essentially  a  short-story  writer,  his 
only  long  romance,  Gabriel  Conroy,  being 
poorly  constructed  and  lacking  in  con 
tinuous  interest.  It  was  an  attempt  to 
put  into  the  form  of  fiction  the  terrible 
tragedy  of  the  Donner  party,  many  of 
whom  perished  in  the  snow  near  the 
Summit,  only  a  few  rods  away  from  the 
main  overland  trail.  Yet  this  book  con 
tains  the  finest  description  of  Winter  in 
the  High  Sierra,  and  it  is  full  of  humor  in 
the  relations  of  Gabriel  and  his  shrewd, 
managing  little  sister. 

Bret  Harte  has  drawn  in  his  stories  a 
gallery  of  characters  that  appeal  to  the 
reader  as  real  flesh  and  blood  people. 
Among  these  may  be  mentioned  the  two 
professional  gamblers,  Oakhurst  and  Jack 
Hamlin,  the  typical  Southern  gentleman  of 
the  old  school,  Colonel  Starbottle,  and 
Yuba  Bill,  the  spectacular  stage-driver. 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Harte  possessed  in  supreme  degree  the 
faculty  of  describing  a  place  or  a  character 
in  a  paragraph  which  clings  to  the  memory. 
Above  all,  he  seemed  to  have  ever  before 
his  eyes  a  vision  of  the  California  foothills, 
with  their  dust-laden  air,  their  pungent 
odors  of  pine  and  bay,  and  their  back 
ground  of  the  snow-crowned  mountain  wall 
of  the  Sierra  Nevada.  Endless  was  the 
variety  of  the  tales  he  wove  about  these 
California  scenes,  but  what  makes  them 
appeal  powerfully  to  readers  who  have 
never  seen  the  Far  Western  land  that  he 
celebrates,  is  the  joy  that  he  exhibits  in 
the  telling  and  the  freshness  and  enthu 
siasm  of  his  pictures  of  the  State  that  he 
loved  and  made  the  whole  world  love 
with  him. 


126] 


HOWELLS 

FIRST  OF  LIVING 
AMERICAN  NOVELISTS 

A  GENIAL  HUMORIST  WHO  HAS  PAINTED 
MANY  PHASES  OF  OUR  SOCIAL  LIFE  — 
His  BOOKS  OF  TRAVEL. 

PROBABLY  the  most  popular  of  contem 
porary  American  men  of  letters  is 
William  Dean  Howells,  who  easily  ranks 
first  among  our  living  novelists.  For  over 
a  half-century  he  has  been  one  of  the  most 
prolific  of  American  writers,  yet  not  a 
single  one  of  his  novels  or  his  books  of 
essays  or  notes  of  travel  can  be  called  a 
pot-boiler.  Howells  began  to  write  during 
the  great  Civil  War  and  he  has  written 
steadily  ever  since,  averaging  about  a  book 
a  year.  Considering  the  large  number  of 
poems,  plays,  novels,  essays,  critical  esti 
mates  of  authors  and  travel  sketches  that 
he  has  produced,  his  average  of  excellence 
is  very  high. 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

Howells  has  all  the  New  England  traits, 
with  a  broader  outlook  which  he  gained 
from  early  association  with  the  people  of 
the  Northern  Reserve  of  Ohio.  The  Puri 
tan  strain  was  dominant  among  these 
settlers  in  Northern  Ohio  but  the  Western 
atmosphere  was  fatal  to  that  class  feeling 
which  the  intellectual  New  Englander 
inherits.  So  Howells,  who  very  early 
showed  great  literary  aptitude,  escaped  the 
narrowing  influence  of  class  prejudice. 
His  boyish  fancy  turned  to  poetry,  but 
nothing  that  he  produced  in  verse  is 
worthy  to  rank  with  his  best  prose  work. 

Like  Franklin,  Whitman,  Mark  Twain 
and  Bret  Harte,  Howells*  real  education 
was  secured  in  a  country  printing  office  of 
which  his  father  was  the  proprietor.  There 
is  something  about  composition  —  the  set 
ting  up  in  type  by  hand  of  other  people's 
writing  —  which  stimulates  literary  work. 
A  boy  with  an  insatiable  craving  for  read 
ing,  if  placed  in  a  printing  office,  usually 
becomes  a  writer.  Howells  had  enjoyed  a 
high  school  education;  he  knew  some  Latin 
and  a  little  Greek,  and  he  had  been  an 
omnivorous  reader.  With  a  keen  literary 
faculty  he  had  the  foundation  laid  for 
literary  culture.  With  the  strong  desire 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 
A  CHARACTERISTIC  PORTRAIT 


GREATEST  LIVING  AMERICAN  NOVELIST 

to  express  his  thought  in  verse  he  wrote 
much  poetry  which  is  above  the  average 
magazine  standard,  but  this  verse  was 
forgotten  when  he  began  to  express  him 
self  in  his  natural  medium  of  prose. 

When  he  was  twenty-two  years  old  and 
had  had  some  experience  as  a  reporter  and 
correspondent  for  several  Ohio  newspapers, 
the  youthful  Howells  made  a  pilgrimage 
to  Boston.  He  had  had  several  poems 
printed  in  the  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  and 
naturally  his  first  visit  was  to  Lowell,  then 
editor  of  the  magazine.  Fifty  years  after, 
in  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance, 
Howells  gives  a  remarkably  readable 
account  of  this  journey  and  of  his  first 
meeting  with  Lowell,  Emerson,  Hawthorne, 
Longfellow,  Holmes,  and  others  of  the 
circle  of  New  England  writers  who  had 
made  the  ATLANTIC  famous.  They  were 
as  gods  to  him,  but  wonderful  to  relate, 
he  found  them  all  simple  in  manners,  easily 
accessible  and  full  of  interest  in  his  literary 
ambitions,  except  Emerson,  whose  aloof 
ness  chilled  the  enthusiastic  neophyte. 
Howells  also  visited  New  York  and  saw 
the  leading  literary  lights,  but  in  neither 
city  was  he  able  to  establish  any  connec 
tion,  so  he  returned  home.  He  did  some 

[129] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

campaign  work  for  Lincoln  which  secured 
him  the  consulate  at  Venice,  with  a  salary 
of  $1,500  a  yean  There  he  mastered 
Italian  and  gave  himself  up  to  the  study 
of  Dante  and  the  great  modern  writers  of 
Italy.  These  four  years  of  literary  leisure 
colored  all  his  life.  He  wrote  articles  on 
Italian  cities,  afterwards  grouped  in  Vene 
tian  Life  and  Italian  Journeys^  and  he 
developed  a  prose  style  of  singular  flexi 
bility  and  charm.  On  his  return  after  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War  Howells  did  some 
literary  work  on  the  New  York  NATION, 
but  he  gladly  accepted  the  assistant- 
editorship  of  the  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY. 

From  that  time,  almost  a  full  half-cen 
tury  ago,  Howells  has  been  a  magazine 
editor,  with  the  later  years  devoted  wholly 
to  literary  work.  He  has  written  over 
thirty  novels  and  romances,  a  dozen 
comedies  and  farces,  and  more  than  a 
dozen  books  of  criticism,  travel  and  remin 
iscence.  Although  his  allegiance  to  Bos 
ton  was  very  strong,  Howells  in  1887 
established  a  connection  with  the  Harpers, 
in  New  York  and  from  that  time  all  his 
books  have  borne  the  New  York  publishers' 
imprint,  and  most  of  his  work  has  appeared 
first  in  the  Harper  periodicals. 


GREATEST  LIVING  AMERICAN  NOVELIST 

Howells  began  his  career  as  a  novelist 
as  far  back  as  1872  with  Their  Wedding 
Journey,  a  charming  tale  spiced  with  quiet 
humor,  but  it  was  The  Lady  of  the  Aroos- 
took,  issued  seven  years  later,  which  first 
gave  him  fame.  This  is  a  story  of  the 
voyage  of  Lydia  Blood,  a  New  England 
girl,  to  Italy  on  one  of  the  old  sailing 
packets  in  order  to  study  singing.  She 
goes  direct  to  Trieste,  where  a  female 
cousin  is  to  take  the  girl  to  her  home  in 
Venice.  Her  parents  died  during  her 
childhood  and  she  has  made  her  home  with 
her  grandparents  in  a  small  New  England 
village.  Very  amusing  are  the  scenes 
describing  the  girl's  trip  to  Boston  with 
her  grandfather  and  the  arrangements  for 
her  voyage.  Only  when  she  is  at  sea  does 
she  discover  that  she  is  the  only  woman 
on  the  ship,  even  the  cook  being  a  negro 
man.  But  the  captain  treats  her  as  he 
would  treat  one  of  his  own  girls,  and  the 
other  passengers,  three  young  men,  are 
polite  and  considerate.  One  of  these  is  a 
young  aristocrat  of  Boston,  who  begins  by 
ridicule  of  Lydia  to  his  companion  and 
ends  by  falling  in  love  with  the  girl.  The 
voyage  is  admirably  described,  the  only 
sensational  incident  being  the  fall  over- 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

board  of  one  of  the  passengers  who  is  a 
dipsomaniac  and  his  rescue  by  Lydia's 
admirer.  The  best  work  in  the  book  is 
devoted  to  Lydia's  introduction  to  Italian 
life  and  customs  at  Venice.  There  we 
leave  her  happy  in  her  love,  after  a  week 
of  suffering  during  which  she  believes  that 
her  lover  has  forsaken  her.  The  book  is 
noteworthy  as  giving  a  perfect  picture  of 
the  New  England  temperament  in  contact 
with  a  strange  environment.  Although 
we  may  laugh  at  Lydia's  ignorance  of 
many  things,  yet  we  respect  her  for  her 
truth,  her  common-sense  and  her  inde 
pendence. 

Another  novel  by  Howells  which  is 
typical  is  A  Modern  Instance,  published  in 
1882.  It  is  devoted  to  a  full-length  picture 
of  a  young  American,  Bartley  Campbell, 
who  marries  Marcia,  the  daughter  of  an 
old  lawyer.  Bartley  has  one  grave  defect: 
he  has  no  moral  principle.  If  things  had 
gone  right  with  him  he  probably  would 
have  settled  down  into  a  quiet,  conservative 
citizen.  As  it  is,  he  gives  way  to  a  tend 
ency  to  drink,  and  his  moral  degeneration 
is  slow  but  sure.  Mr.  Howells,  with  rare 
power,  shows  us  how  inevitable  is  Hartley's 
decline  after  the  first  step  in  self-indulgence 


STUDIO  or  WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 
THE  INTERIOR  OF  A  REMODELED  STABLE,  A  SINGLE, 

LARGE,  SUNNY  ROOM 
COPYRIGHT  1911  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


GREATEST  LIVING  AMERICAN  NOVELIST 

and  how  this  decline  is  stimulated  by  the 
jealous  disposition  of  his  wife.  In  the 
hands  of  a  woman  of  tact  Bartley  might 
have  been  saved,  but  his  wife  simply  aggra 
vates  his  malady.  Finally  he  abandons 
her,  going  out  to  Arizona,  where  he  begins 
a  secret  suit  for  divorce.  Marcia  learns  of 
this  legal  proceeding  and  with  her  old 
father  journeys  to  the  West  to  contest  the 
suit.  The  figure  of  Bartley  in  the  court 
room  —  the  once  dapper,  clean-cut  young 
fellow  now  a  bloated,  shabby  hanger-on 
about  the  courts,  with  his  fat  neck  hanging 
over  his  greasy  coat  collar  —  will  always 
remain  in  the  reader's  memory.  Equally 
impressive  is  the  figure  of  the  old  Judge, 
Marcia's  father,  who  denounces  the  man 
who  has  ruined  his  daughter's  life.  Pro 
fessor  William  Lyon  Phelps  compares  this 
book  with  George  Eliot's  Romo/a  and 
declares  that  the  American  novelist's  pic 
ture  of  the  gradual  moral  degeneration  of 
Bartley  Campbell  is  finer  than  the  English 
author's  sketch  of  the  downfall  of  Tito 
Melima. 

Other  fine  stories  by  Howells  are  ^The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapbam,  a  powerful  sketch  of 
a  self-made  American,  and  Indian  Summer, 
a  comedy  of  the  tangled  relations  of  a 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

young  girl  and  a  middle-aged  man  and 
woman.  Throughout  half  the  book  the 
man  sincerely  believes  he  is  in  love  with 
the  romantic  young  girl,  as  she  believes 
that  she  loves  him.  There  is  very  little 
action  in  the  story,  but  the  conversations 
are  as  witty  as  the  dialogue  in  the  third 
act  of  Oscar  Wilde's  Lady  Windermeres 
Fan.  All  the  talk  between  the  two  women 
is  also  admirably  done.  It  is  surprising 
that  this  book  should  have  ceased  to  keep 
its  hold  on  American  readers,  as  it  is  far 
and  away  better  than  most  of  the  humor 
ous  stories  issued  every  year. 

Howells  has  tried  his  hand  at  a  number 
of  farces,  most  of  which  are  very  good 
reading,  but  they  have  lacked  action  to 
succeed  on  the  stage.  His  sketches  of 
travel,  of  which  he  has  written  many 
volumes,  are  always  readable,  although  of 
late  he  has  fallen  into  the  style  of  Henry 
James,  which  makes  his  work  very  hard 
reading.  It  is  singular,  the  influence  of 
Tolstoi  upon  Howells'  later  novels  and  the 
influence  of  James  upon  his  style.  During 
the  last  ten  years  Howells  seems  to  fancy 
that  he  must  have  some  moral  doctrine  to 
preach  in  his  novels,  with  the  result  that 
his  work  reminds  one  of  a  religious  tract 


GREATEST  LIVING  AMERICAN  NOVELIST 

disguised  as  a  novel.  All  the  freshness  and 
spontaneity  that  marked  his  earlier  novels 
is  gone.  Then,  too,  he  seems  to  think, 
with  Mr.  James,  that  his  thought  cannot 
be  expressed  in  simple  language,  but  must 
be  elaborated  and  refined  to  the  last  degree. 
The  result  is  the  loss  of  that  simple,  flexible 
style  which  was  once  his  greatest  charm. 
It  is  perhaps  in  reminiscence  that  Mr. 
Howells  is  most  happy.  In  A  Boy's  'Town 
he  has  described  happily  and  with  great 
humor  his  boyhood  in  an  Ohio  village, 
while  in  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance 
he  has  sketched  most  deftly  the  life  of 
Cambridge  and  the  great  figures  in  New 
England  literature  of  forty  years  ago.  To 
Howells  also  belongs  the  credit  of  having 
encouraged  and  aided  by  his  wise  advice 
many  of  the  successful  American  writers 
of  today. 


[135 


MARKHAM 
THE  POET  OF  THE 
AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

WALLACE  CALLED  HIM  "THE  GREATEST 
POET  OF  THE  SOCIAL  PASSION"  —  FAME 
CAME  TO  THE  CALIFORNIAN  WITH  "THE 
MAN  WITH  THE  HOE." 

EDWIN  MARKHAM  and  William  Dean 
Howells  I  have  selected  as  the  best 
representatives  of  living  American  spiritual 
writers  because  of  their  work  and  their 
influence.  In  looking  over  the  field  of 
contemporary  American  authors  one  is  apt 
to  be  misled  by  the  ephemeral  popularity 
of  certain  writers  who  shrewdly  respond 
to  the  literary  demands  of  the  time.  Or 
he  is  inclined  to  give  too  great  prominence 
to  literary  skill,  as  in  the  case  of  Henry 
James,  who  was  acclaimed  by  leading  Eng 
lish  and  American  critics  as  one  of  the 
greatest  of  our  writers,  yet  whose  works 
are  written  in  a  style  so  involved  and  so 


EDWIN  MARKHAM 

FROM  A  FAVORITE  PHOTOGRAPH  OF  MR.  MARKHAM 

TAKEN  BY  W.  E.  DASSONVILLE, 

SAN  FRANCISCO 


THE  POET  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

artificial  that  in  my  judgment  the  next 
generation  will  refuse  to  read  any  of  his 
books  except  Daisy  Miller.  The  tendency 
of  our  own  day  is  toward  the  undue 
emphasis  of  sex  problems  in  literature  and 
on  the  stage,  and  so  greatly  has  this  warped 
our  literary  judgment  that  the  coming 
generation  will  be  amazed  at  the  popu 
larity  of  certain  books  of  this  period  and 
at  the  moral  decadence  of  the  stage  and 
the  decline  of  good  acting.  In  fact,  we 
have  reached  the  climax  of  the  gross  and 
the  vulgar  on  the  stage  just  as  we  have 
neared  the  limit  in  the  foolish  fad  of 
cabaret-dancing  and  the  popular  mania  for 
moving  pictures.  These  things  cannot 
become  permanent  without  seriously  im 
pairing  the  very  fibre  of  American  char 
acter.  Without  a  strong  reaction  from  the 
present  rage  for  indecent  plays,  foolish  or 
brutal  moving  pictures  and  erotic  fidion, 
American  life  is  doomed  to  a  far  lower 
plane  than  it  now  occupies.  England  and 
France  were  both  being  weakened  in  the 
same  way,  when  the  war  came  and  served 
as  the  most  drastic  check  to  all  literary 
and  social  heresies  founded  on  lack  of 
sound  moral  character. 

Edwin  Markham  I  have  taken  as  the 

1137] 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

foremost  of  the  new  writers  of  our  period 
because  of  his  moral  force  and  his  keen 
sympathy  with  the  struggles  of  those  who 
work  with  their  hands.  Coming  up,  as  he 
did,  from  the  ranks  of  manual  labor, 
securing  an  education  by  hard  work  and 
painful  self-denial,  he  has  a  feeling  for  the 
working  classes  which  no  one  can  share 
who  has  not  earned  his  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  his  brow.  Had  he  written  nothing 
more  than  The  Man  With  the  Hoe  he 
would  have  been  worthy  of  a  place  among 
the  great  laureates  of  labor;  but  in  both 
prose  and  verse  he  has  done  fine  work  in 
helping  to  secure  better  conditions  in  mills 
and  factories,  and  especially  in  protecting 
young  children  from  the  selfishness  of 
parents  and  employers. 

Markham's  natural  method  of  expression 
is  a  free  blank  verse,  which  he  handles 
with  great  ease  and  power.  As  he  says 
himself,  his  thought  unconsciously  crystal 
lizes  in  this  form  of  verse,  although  he  is 
skilful  in  handling  various  poetical  metres. 
Before  he  wrote  the  poem  which  suddenly 
flashed  his  fame  around  the  world,  he  had 
written  some  fine  sonnets  and  other  poems, 
all  of  which  were  tinged  with  his  deep 
earnestness.  Early  in  his  career  he  was 


THE  POET  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

profoundly  stirred  by  a  photographic 
reproduction  of  Millet's  "The  Man  With  the 
Hoe",  and  some  of  the  thoughts  which  it 
inspired  he  cast  in  poetic  form.  More 
than  a  decade  later  he  saw  the  original 
painting  in  the  art  gallery  of  a  San  Fran 
cisco  millionaire.  As  Markham  himself 
says: 

"Millet's  'The  Man  With  the  Hoe'  is 
to  me  the  most  solemnly  impressive  of  all 
modern  paintings.  As  I  look  upon  the 
august  ruin  that  it  pictures  I  sometimes 
dare  to  think  that  its  strength  surpasses 
the  power  of  Michael  Angelo.  *  *  *  For 
an  hour  I  stood  before  the  painting, 
absorbing  the  majesty  of  its  despair,  the 
tremendous  import  of  its  admonition.  I 
stood  there,  the  power  and  the  terror  of 
the  thing  growing  upon  my  heart,  the  pity 
and  sorrow  of  it  eating  into  my  soul.  It 
came  to  me  with  a  dim  echo  in  it  of  my 
own  life  —  came  with  its  pitiless  pathos 
and  mournful  grandeur." 

Markham  was  so  deeply  moved  by  this 
study  of  Millet's  picture  that  he  took  up 
his  original  draft,  expanded  it,  and  pro 
duced  the  poem  as  it  stands  today.  At  a 
meeting  of  a  literary  club  in  San  Francisco 
he  read  this  poem,  which  so  greatly  im- 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

pressed  Bailey  Millard,  then  Sunday  editor 
of  the  San  Francisco  EXAMINER,  that  he 
secured  the  manuscript  for  publication  in 
his  paper.  The  day  it  appeared  corre 
spondents  of  several  Eastern  newspapers 
telegraphed  it  to  their  journals  and  it  was 
cabled  to  London.  Markham's  name  as  a 
world  poet  was  thus  flashed  over  the  land 
and  under  the  sea,  and  in  a  single  day  he 
found  himself  famous ! 

This  great  poem  —  to  my  mind  the 
finest  thing  that  has  been  produced  in 
American  literature  since  the  Civil  War  — 
consists  of  five  stanzas,  of  which  I  will 
quote  here  the  first  and  fourth,  merely  to 
give  an  idea  of  the  quality  of  the  verse 
and  its  large  number  of  unforgetable  lines : 

Bowed  by  the  weight  of  centuries  he  leans 
Upon  his  hoe  and  gazes  on  the  ground, 
The  emptiness  of  ages  in  his  face, 
And  on  his  back  the  burden  of  the  world. 
Who  made  him  dead  to  rapture  and  despair, 
A  thing  that  grieves  not  and  that  never  hopes, 
Stolid  and  stunned,  a  brother  to  the  ox?  i 

Who  loosened  and  let  down  that  brutal  jaw? 
Whose  was  the  hand  that  slanted  back  this  brow? 
Whose  breath  blew  out  the  light  within  this  brain? 
*        *        * 

O  masters,  lords  and  rulers  in  all  lands, 

Is  this  the  handiwork  you  give  to  God, 

This  monstrous  thing  distorted  and  soul-quenched? 

How  will  you  straighten  up  this  shape; 

Touch  it  again  with  immortality; 

Give  back  the  upward  looking  and  the  light; 

[I40] 


1 

&; 


X    X 

w  o 

2  g  a  *, 


N  .        P 

Z?S 


THE  POET  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Rebuild  in  it  the  music  and  the  dream; 
Make  right  the  immemorial  infamies, 
Perfidious  wrongs,  immedicable  woes? 

Markham  is  not  a  poet  of  occasions, 
although  some  of  his  best  work,  like  his 
Lincoln,  was  written  for  anniversary  cele 
brations.  He  does  not  write  until  the 
spirit  moves  him.  Hence  the  gap  of  more 
than  a  decade  between  his  second  and  third 
books  of  verse.  He  does  not  always  reach 
the  height  toward  which  he  aims,  but  it 
can  be  said  for  his  work  that  it  maintains 
a  higher  level  than  the  work  of  any  other 
living  American  poet.  Some  may  prefer 
Whitcomb  Riley,  but  to  me  Markham 
seems  to  sound  a  finer  note  of  a  broader 
humanity  than  the  Hoosier  poet,  sweet 
and  wholesome  and  genuine  as  is  all  Riley's 
work.  In  other  words,  Markham  is  what 
the  late  Alfred  Russell  Wallace  so  aptly 
called  him,  "the  greatest  poet  of  the 
Social  Passion  that  has  yet  appeared  in 
the  world." 

Markham  seems  to  feel  the  woes  of  the 
heavy-laden  as  no  other  poet  of  our  time 
has  felt  them.  The  burden  of  poverty,  the 
hopelessness  of  the  poor  creatures  who  are 
always  clinging  to  the  slippery  edge  of  the 
abyss  of  want  and  crime,  the  injustice  of 
fate  that  keeps  some  of  the  finest  natures 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

forever  in  bondage  of  debt  —  these  are  the 
themes  which  bring  forth  the  lightning  of 
his  wrath,  the  thunder  of  his  scorn.  His 
heart  is  so  moved  by  the  spectacle  of  the 
world's  unfortunates  that  he  compels  the 
reader's  pity  and  tears.  He  loses  all  count 
of  time  and  space  when  the  spirit  moves 
him.  Hence  his  shortest  lyric  seems  to 
have  the  freshness  of  the  first  morning,  and 
there  is  none  of  the  smell  of  the  lamp  on 
any  of  his  work,  no  matter  how  careful 
may  be  the  finish  of  the  verse. 

Without  apparent  effort  Markham  also 
seems  to  select  the  right  word  in  every  line 
and  his  rhymes  are  never  awkward  nor 
far-fetched.  In  fact,  when  he  wears  his 
singing  robes  and  is  under  the  spell  of  his 
powerful  imagination,  language  seems  to 
become  plastic  under  his  hands.  He  uses 
words  as  the  potter  uses  the  clay  on  his 
wheel,  with  a  few  deft  movements  making 
the  shapeless  lump  take  on  varied  forms  of 
beauty.  This  power  is  seen  more  signally 
in  Virgilia  than  in  anything  Markham  has 
written.  That  poem  breathes  inspiration 
in  every  line,  and  it  has  a  sweep  of  imagi 
nation,  a  wealth  of  imagery  and  a  rare 
kind  of  prophetic  power  that  bears  one 
along  to  the  noble  end. 


THE  POET  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

In  Virgilia  the  poet  gives  a  fine  con 
ception  of  the  meeting  of  his  first  self  with 
his  soul-mate,  the  woman  who  was  formed 
to  feed  his  imagination  and  to  give  him 
courage  to  struggle  against  fate,  and  then 
of  his  fruitless  quest  for  her  throughout 
the  ages.  Here  are  a  few  lines  from  the 
conclusion  of  this  poem,  with  the  splendid 
sweep  of  the  verse: 

I  will  go  out  where  the  sea-birds  travel, 

And  mix  my  soul  with  the  wind  and  the  sea; 

Let  the  green  waves  weave  and  the  gray  rains  ravel, 
And  the  tides  go  over  me. 

The  sea  is  the  mother  of  songs  and  sorrows, 

And  out  of  her  wonder  our  wild  loves  come; 

And  so  it  will  be  through  the  long  tomorrows, 
Till  all  our  lips  are  dumb. 

She  knows  all  sighs  and  she  knows  all  sinning, 
And  they  whisper  out  in  her  breaking  wave; 

She  has  known  it  all  since  the  far  beginning,          , 
Since  the  grief  of  that  first  grave. 

She  shakes  the  heart  with  her  stars  and  thunder 

And  her  soft,  low  word  when  the  winds  are  late; 

For  the  sea  is  Woman,  the  sea  is  Wonder  — 
Her  other  name  is  Fate! 

*        *        * 

Many  of  our  poets,  when  they  have 
caught  the  ear  of  the  public,  have  heark 
ened  to  the  voice  of  the  publisher  and 
have  put  forth  poor  work.  But  Markham 
has  written  only  when  the  spirit  moved 
him.  Hence  he  has  only  three  books  of 


GREAT  SPIRITUAL  WRITERS 

verse  to  his  credit:  The  Man  With  the  Hoe 
and  Other  Poems ,  Lincoln  and  Other  Poems 
and  The  Shoes  of  Happiness  and  Other 
Poems.  Hence,  also,  there  is  no  mediocre 
verse  in  these  volumes. 

It  is  not  often  that  a  poet  has  an  oppor 
tunity  to  celebrate  the  State  which  gave 
him  his  inspiration  as  Markham  has  cele 
brated  California.  Though  not  born  in 
the  Far  West,  Markham  spent  all  his  early 
impressionable  years  in  the  country  across 
the  bay  from  San  Francisco.  There  he 
learned  what  it  was  to  earn  his  bread  in 
the  sweat  of  his  brow,  and  there  as  a 
farmer's  boy,  he  stored  up  those  pictures 
of  the  heavens  and  the  earth  which  give 
distinction  to  his  verse.  In  California ,  the 
Wonderful,  Markham  has  produced  a 
unique  book.  It  gives  a  mass  of  infor 
mation  about  the  resources,  the  history, 
the  scenic  beauty  and  the  marvelous 
development  of  the  Golden  State,  but  all 
the  prosaic  details  are  touched  with  poetry. 
The  man  who  witnessed  these  wonders  was 
a  poet,  and  he  was  unable  to  write  this 
history  in  any  other  form  than  poetical 
prose.  This  book  was  prepared  to  let  the 
world  know  what  the  Panama-Pacific 
Exposition  at  San  Francisco  was  designed 


THE  POET  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  commemorate.  When  the  great  Expo 
sition  was  fairly  under  way,  Markham  was 
invited  to  visit  it  and  to  write  his  impres 
sions.  He  took  the  occasion  to  visit  all 
parts  of  the  State,  and  the  reception  that 
he  received  was  so  hearty  and  so  enthu 
siastic  that  it  quite  overcame  the  modest 
poet.  It  showed  him  that  the  bard,  unlike 
the  prophet,  might  be  honored  in  his  own 
home. 

The  poet's  other  book  of  prose  is  Chil 
dren  in  Bondage,  a  startling  description  of 
the  many  American  industries  in  which 
young  children  are  stunted  and  ruined, 
morally  and  physically,  to  satisfy  the  greed 
of  parents  and  employers. 

Markham's  hair  is  white  but  his  eyes 
are  keen  and  his  voice  is  vibrant  with 
strength  and  feeling.  So  we  may  expect 
more  poems  from  his  pen  that  will  help  the 
world  to  live  the  spiritual  life. 


Bibliography 


Notes    of   Standard  Editions,    with  Lives, 
Sketches,  Reminiscences  and  Criticisms. 

*•  §  HESE  bibliographical  notes  have  been 
•*•  prepared  especially  for  the  use  of  those 
who  desire  to  make  a  study  of  the  authors 
whose  best  works  are  discussed  in  this  volume. 
They  lay  no  claim  to  completeness,  but  they 
have  been  selected  with  an  eye  single  to  their 
helpfulness.  Many  fine  articles  on  Ameri 
can  authors  are  buried  in  the  bound  volumes 
of  magazines,  and  to  these  the  only  key  is 
Poolers  Index,  with  its  annex,  which  brings 
all  references  up  to  date.  Of  Emerson, 
Lowell,  Hawthorne  and  Holmes  full  bibliog 
raphies  have  been  printed  in  limited  editions 
by  Houghton,  Miffiin  Co.  A  Study  of  Eng 
lish  Prose  Writers  by  J.  S.  Clark,  gives 
excellent  sketches  of  Irving,  Hawthorne, 
Emerson,  Lowell  and  Holmes.  American 
Prose  Masters,^  W.  C.  Brownell,  is  also 
worth  careful  reading. 

EMERSON 

Three  editions  of  Emerson's  complete  works  are  printed  by 
Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.  —  the  New  Centenary,  the  Riverside,  and 

[147] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

the  Little  Classic  —  each  complete  in  twelve  volumes.  The  first 
has  a  biography  and  notes  by  Edward  Waldo  Emerson.  These 
notes  are  also  printed  in  the  large  type  Riverside  Pocket  Edition 
recently  issued  by  the  same  publishers,  in  twelve  volumes,  bound 
in  flexible  leather.  The  volumes  in  all  of  these  editions  are  sold 
separately.  Many  of  the  essays  are  printed  in  separate  form. 
The  poems  are  in  the  single  volume  Household  Edition.  Among 
the  mass  of  criticism  and  reminiscence  of  Emerson  it  is  only 
possible  here  to  indicate  the  best  books  and  articles  for  the 
general  reader.  The  best  short  estimate  of  Emerson  is  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes'  Life  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series. 
James  Elliott  Cabot  wrote  the  authorized  biography  in  two 
volumes  and  Edward  Waldo  Emerson,  a  son,  wrote  an  interesting 
sketch,  Emerson  in  Concord,  and  edited  his  father's  works  and 
the  correspondence  with  John  Stirling.  Charles  Eliot  Norton 
edited  correspondence  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson.  Good  estimates 
of  Emerson's  work  and  influence  are  Alexander  Ireland's  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  His  Life,  Genius  and  Writings;  A.  Bronson 
Alcott's  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson;  Philosopher  and  Seer;  Moncure 
D.  Conway's  Emerson  at  Home  and  Abroad;  Joel  Benton's 
Emerson  as  a  Poet;  F.  B.  Sanborn's  'The  Genius  and  Character  of 
Emerson;  C.  J.  Woodbury's  folks  With  Emerson;  Henry  James' 
Partial  Portraits,  pp.  1-34.  Among  the  mass  of  critical  estimates 
may  be  named  Lowell's  chapter  in  My  Study  Windows;  Howells 
in  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance  and  Augustine  Birrell  in 
Obiter  Dicta,  second  series.  Among  magazine  articles  are 
"Emerson  in  the  Lecture  Room  "by  Annie  M.  Fields  in  ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY,  June,  1883;  "Emerson,  Philosopher  and  Poet,"  by 
A.  H.  Guernsey  in  APPLETON'S;  "Emerson  and  Concord,"  by 
M.  A.  De  Wolfe  Howe,  in  the  BOOKMAN,  November,  1897; 
"Homes  and  Haunts  of  Emerson,"  by  F.  B.  Sanborn,  in  SCRIB- 
NER'S,  February,  1879;  and  E.  P.  Whipple's  "  Recollections,"  in 
HARPER'S,  September,  1882.  A  Bibliography  of  Emerson  by 
George  Willis  Cooke  is  the  most  complete  work  of  its  kind,  with 
a  list  of  biographies,  letters,  reminiscences,  notices  and  criticisms. 
Emerson,  Poet  and  thinker  by  Elisabeth  Luther  Gary  is  a  good 
outline  study  and  well  illustrated. 

WHITMAN 

Mitchell  Kennerley  is  the  present  publisher  of  Walt  Whit 
man's  works,  having  taken  over  the  authorized  editions  first 
issued  in  1897  and  1898,  by  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.  These 

[i48] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

include  Complete  Leaves  of  Grass  and  Complete  Prose  Works,  each 
in  one  volume.  Mr.  Kennerley  also  owns  the  plates  of  the 
Cam  Jen  Edition,  ten  volumes,  published  in  1902  in  New  York, 
which  contained  much  biographical  and  critical  matter  by  O.  L. 
Triggs.  Two  of  Whitman's  literary  executors,  Horace  Traubel 
and  Dr.  R.  M.  Bucke,  have  thrown  much  light  on  Whitman's 
last  years.  Dr.  Bucke  edited  Calamus,  a  series  of  Whitman's 
letters  to  Peter  Doyle,  the  young  car  conductor  whom  the  old 
poet  loved  as  a  son.  Dr.  Bucke  also  wrote  an  authorized 
biography  of  Whitman.  W.  D.  O'Connor  in  fbe  Good  Gray 
Poet  made  an  eloquent  defense  of  Whitman  after  his  discharge 
from  the  Indian  Department.  Probably  the  book  which  gives 
one  the  best  idea  of  Whitman  is  Horace  Traubel's  With  Walt 
Whitman  in  Camden  —  a  record  of  daily  talks  with  the  old  poet 
in  1888.  This  is  now  published  by  Mitchell  Kennerley.  The 
best  short  sketch  is  Walt  Whitman:  His  Life  and  Work,  by  Bliss 
Perry  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series.  Other  good  books 
are  Walt  Whitman:  A  Study,  by  J.  Addington  Symonds;  Reminis 
cences  of  Walt  Whitman,  by  W.  S.  Kennedy.  Critical  estimates 
may  be  found  in  Stedman's  Poets  of  America,  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson's  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books,  and  Dowden's 
Studies  in  Literature.  Some  of  the  best  magazine  articles  on 
Whitman  are  as  follows:  E.  C.  Stedman,  SCRIBNER'S,  volume 
21 ;  W.  S.  Kennedy,  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW,  138;  G.  C. 
Macaulay,  NINETEENTH  CENTURY,  52;  C.  D.  Lanier,  CHAU- 
TAUQUAN,  15;  John  Burroughs,  CRITIC,  20;  DIAL,  14,  "Relations 
to  Science";  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW,  154,  "The  Poet  of 
Democracy";  H.  S.  Traubel,  ARENA,  15,  "Conversations  with 
Walt  Whitman";  W.  S.  Kennedy,  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW, 
138,  "Poet  Lore,"  7;  "Walt  Whitman  and  Emerson";  M.  D. 
Conway,  OPEN  COURT,  6. 

IRVING 

G.  P.  Putnam  was  Irving's  only  American  publisher.  So 
well  was  the  author  satisfied  with  his  treatment  that  when  the 
publisher  was  in  financial  straits  and  offered  to  sell  the  copy 
rights  to  Irving,  the  author  refused,  and  waived  all  his  royalties 
until  Putnam  was  once  more  in  prosperous  circumstances.  The 
standard  editions  are  still  published  by  the  Putnams'.  Among 
these  are  the  New  Knickerbocker  Edition,  in  forty  volumes,  and 
the  New  Handy  Volume  Edition,  on  Bible  paper,  in  twelve 
volumes.  Many  of  the  single  works  are  published  in  finely 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

illustrated  editions,  and  all  of  them  may  be  had  separately  in 
the  Putnam  editions.  His  nephew,  Pierre  M.  Irving,  wrote 
The  Life  and  Letters  t  in  four  volumes.  The  monograph,  Wash 
ington  Irving,  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series,  was  written 
by  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  Good  estimates  of  Irving  may  be 
found  in  these  works:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Personal  Reminiscences; 
T.  B.  Shaw's  A  Manual  of  English  Literature;  E.  Dowden's 
Studies  in  Literature;  F.  H.  Underwood's  Handbook  of  English 
Literature;  J.  Scott  Clark's  A  Study  of  English  Prose  Writers; 
H.  A.  Beers'  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters;  Donald  G. 
Mitchell  in  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY,  volume  13;  G.  P.  Lathrop  in 
SCRIBNER'S  MONTHLY,  volume  n;  C.  Cook  in  the  CENTURY 
MAGAZINE,  volume  12. 

POE 

The  standard  edition  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe's  works  was  issued 
in  1894-95  in  Chicago  by  Stone  &  Kimball,  in  ten  volumes,  with 
memoir  by  G.  E.  Woodberry  and  prefaces  by  E.  C.  Stedman. 
This  edition  has  since  been  published  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 
Two  excellent  editions,  edited  by  Prof.  Richardson  of  Dart 
mouth,  containing  a  fine  series  of  illustrations  after  paintings 
by  Mr.  F.  S.  Coburn,  are  published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  by  George  E.  Woodberry  is  an 
excellent  biography  issued  in  two  well  illustrated  volumes. 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  Poey  by  James  A.  Harrison  (1903),  gives 
many  new  facts  and  corrects  numerous  misstatements.  Poe's 
poems  and  his  leading  short  stories  are  issued  in  many  forms. 
His  tales  have  had  a  greater  success  in  France  than  in  his  own 
country.  Rufus  W.  Griswold,  who  wrote  the  first  memoir  of 
Poe,  had  a  bitter  pen,  and  he  stirred  up  controversies  over  Poe's 
actions  and  character  that  were  not  ended  for  a  half-century. 
Among  magazine  articles  on  Poe  may  be  named:  R.  H.  Stod- 
dard,  HARPER'S,  45;  John  Burroughs,  DIAL,  15;  Julian  Haw 
thorne,  LIPPINCOTT'S,  48,  "My  Adventure  with  Poe";  G.  P. 
Lathrop,  SCRIBNER'S,  n;  S.  A.  T.  Weiss,  SCRIBNER'S,  15,  "Last 
Days  of  Poe";  W.  F.  Gill,  ARENA,  22,  "After  Fifty  Years"; 
H.  W.  Mabie,  OUTLOOK,  62;  ATLANTIC,  84,  "Poe's  Place  in 
American  Literature";  E.  L.  Didier,  BOOKMAN,  1 6,  "Cult  of  Poe"; 
J.F.Carter,LiPPiNCOTT*s,70,"Last  Night  in  Richmond";  Edwin 
Markham,  ARENA,  32,  "Poetry  of  Poe";  H.  Scheffauer,  OVER 
LAND,  53,  "The  Baiting  of  Poe";  S.  Strunsky,  NATION,  88,"  Pop 
ularity  of  Poe";  Walt  Whitman,  CRITIC,  2,  "Significance  of  Poe." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
HAWTHORNE 

The  standard  edition  of  Hawthorne  is  published  by  Hough- 
ton,  Mifflin  Co.,  in  thirteen  volumes,  edited  with  an  introduction 
by  Horace  E.  Scudder  and  with  bibliographical  notes  by  George 
P.  Lathrop.  The  Gray  lock  Edit ion ,  in  handy  volume  form, 
bound  in  flexible  leather  or  cloth,  twenty-two  volumes,  has  been 
issued  recently  by  the  same  publishers,  and  is  sold  separately  or 
in  the  set.  His  son  Julian  wrote  the  authorized  biography  in 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  His  Wife.  Julian  also  wrote  Haw 
thorne  and  His  Circle,  and  edited  the  love  letters  of  his  father 
and  his  mother,  which  show  how  much  Hawthorne  depended 
upon  his  wife's  criticism  and  what  great  service  she  rendered  in 
stimulating  his  genius.  Among  reminiscences  may  be  named 
Personal  Recollections  of  Hawthorne  by  Horatio  Bridge,  a  college 
chum  and  lifelong  friend;  Memoirs  of  Hawthorne  by  Rose  Haw 
thorne  Lathrop,  a  daughter;  and  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  by  Annie 
Fields,  widow  of  the  publisher.  Among  critical  estimates  are 
Moncure  D.  Conway's  Life  in  the  Great  Writers  Series;  George 
E.  Woodberry's  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  in  the  American  Men  of 
Letters  series  (the  best  short  sketch  and  estimate);  The  Life  and 
Genius  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  by  Frank  Preston  Stearns;  Henry 
James'  sketch  in  English  Men  of  Letters  series  (a  very  unsatis 
factory  piece  of  work);  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  chapter  in  Hours  in  a 
Library ;  James  T.  Field's  "  Our  Whispering  Gallery  "  in  the  ATLAN 
TIC  MONTHLY  from  February  to  May,  1871,  noteworthy  as  contain 
ing  a  passage  descriptive  of  Lincoln  which  was  omitted  from 
Hawthorne's  article  in  the  ATLANTIC  about  his  visit  to  Wash 
ington.  Nina  E.  Browne's  Bibliography  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne 
(1905)  is  a  remarkable  work,  as  it  represents  the  labor  of  sixteen 
years.  It  covers  the  whole  field  of  American  and  European 
biographical  and  critical  articles.  Howells  in  Literary  Friends 
and  Acquaintance  says  of  Hawthorne:  "He  left  a  legacy  which 
in  its  kind  is  the  finest  the  race  has  received  from  any  mind." 

COOPER 

Cooper's  works  fill  thirty-two  volumes  in  the  Household 
Edition  issued  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  with  introductions  to 
many  volumes  by  Susan  Fenimore  Cooper.  The  Leatherstock- 
ing  Tales  and  the  Sea  Tales  each  occupy  five  volumes.  To 
those  who  wish  a  distinctly  larger  type,the  Knickerbocker  Edition, 
in  thirty-three  volumes,  published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  will 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

prove  attractive.  The  same  plates  are  used  in  printing  the  less 
expensive  Mohawk  Edition,  which  is  sold  in  separate  volumes  or 
in  the  full  set.  The  most  popular  of  the  Leatherstocking  Tales 
is  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans.  Thomas  R.  Lounsberry  has  written 
an  excellent  sketch  of  Cooper  for  The  American  Men  of  Letters 
series,  and  M.  A.  De  Wolfe  Howe  makes  a  good  estimate  in  the 
series  American  Bookmen.  W.  E.  Henley  wrote  the  article  on 
Cooper  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  but  it  is  marred  by  his 
lack  of  knowledge  of  American  life  and  his  severe  strictures  on 
Cooper's  criticisms  of  English  life  and  character.  Henley  fails 
to  bring  out  Cooper's  intimate  knowledge  of  the  Indian  and 
his  remarkable  power  of  describing  the  primeval  forest  of 
America.  Good  estimates  of  Cooper  may  be  found  in  SCRIB- 
NER'S  MONTHLY  for  April,  1906,  by  W.  C.  Brownell;  AMERICAN 
BOOKMAN  for  1898  by  M.  A.  De  Wolfe  Howe,  and  in  the  intro 
duction  to  the  Macmillan  (English)  edition  of  Cooper  (1901) 
by  Morris  Mowbray.  Here  are  some  magazine  articles  by  critics 
on  Cooper's  work:  S.  L.  Clemens,  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW, 
16,  "Literary  Offenses  of  Cooper";  M.  A.  De  Wolfe  Howe, 
BOOKMAN,  5;  H.  A.  Beers,  CRITIC,  15;  S.  F.  Cooper,  ATLANTIC, 
59;  E.  E.  Hale,  Jr.,  S-WANEE,  18. 

LONGFELLOW 

The  standard  edition  of  Longfellow  is  the  Riverside  in  eleven 
volumes,  but  the  one  most  convenient  and  serviceable  is  the 
Cambridge  Edition  in  one  volume.  Both  of  these  are  published 
by  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.  The  best  short  life  is  T.  W. 
Higginson's  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series.  Eric  S. 
Robertson  has  contributed  a  life  to  the  English  series  Great 
Writers.  The  Life  of  Henry  Wadswortb  Longfellow,  with  Extracts 
from  His  Journals  and  Correspondence,  by  Samuel  Longfellow, 
is  very  full  and  complete.  A  supplemental  volume,  Final 
Memorials,  contains  the  journals  and  letters  of  the  last  fifteen 
years  of  Longfellow's  life.  Of  reminiscence  there  is  a  mass,  as 
Longfellow  was  the  most  accessible  of  all  the  New  England 
authors.  He  never  refused  to  see  a  caller  or  to  give  his  auto 
graph.  The  best  sketch  of  Longfellow's  later  life  is  in  Howells' 
Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance.  Among  critical  articles  may 
be  mentioned:  E.  P.  Whipple,  Essays  and  Reviews;  E.  C.  Sted- 
man,  Poets  of  America;  W.  E.  Henley,  Views  and  Reviews;  F.  H. 
Underwood,  Henry  Wadswortb  Longfellow;  H.  E.  Scudder,  Men 
and  Letters;  Howells,  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW,  volume  104; 

[152] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

R.  H.  Stoddard,  SCRIBNER'S,  volume  17;  G.  W.  Curtis,  HAR 
PER'S,  volume  65;  Stedman,  CENTURY,  volume  4;  O.  W.  Holmes, 
ATLANTIC,  volume  49;  T.  W.  Higginson,  NATION,  volume  34. 

LOWELL 

Lowell's  works  fill  eleven  volumes  and  are  issued  by 
Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.  His  prose  is  issued  in  seven  volumes. 
The  Life,  in  two  volumes  (1901),  was  written  by  Horace  E. 
Scudder  who  also  contributed  the  sketch  of  two  pages  in  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica.  Letters  of  James  Russell  Lowell,  edited 
by  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  appeared  in  two  volumes  in  1899  from 
the  Harpers'  press.  James  Russell  Lowell  and  His  Friends,  by 
Edward  Everett  Hale,  contains  many  reminiscences.  Lives  of 
Lowell  have  also  been  written  by  F.  H.  Underwood  and  Ferris 
Greenslet.  Among  critical  estimates  are  Henry  James'  Essays 
in  London;  George  Bancroft,  "Our  Ablest  Critic,"  in  LITERARY 
WORLD,  June  27,  1885;  Sarah  K.  Bolton,  Famous  American 
Authors;  Royal  Cortissoz,  "Some  Writers  of  Good  Letters," 
CENTURY,  March,  1897;  Elbert  Hubbard,  Little  Journeys  to 
Homes  of  Famous  Authors,  volume  ii;  Hamilton  Wright  Mabie, 
My  Study  Fire,  second  series;  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  "The 
Real  American  at  His  Best,"  in  LITERARY  WORLD,  volume  16; 
W.  C.  Wilkinson,  SCRIBNER'S,  volume  4;  E.  C.  Stedman,  CEN 
TURY,  volume  2;  Henry  James,  ATLANTIC,  volume  69;  T.  W. 
Higginson,  NATION,  volumes  53  and  57.  The  Bibliography  of 
Lowell  by  GEORGE  WILLIS  COOKE  gives  all  the  editions  and  a 
mass  of  other  material. 

HOLMES 

The  complete  works  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  published 
by  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  fill  fourteen  volumes,  with  Notes 
by  the  author.  A  popular  edition  is  issued  in  eight  volumes. 
His  poems  come  in  one  volume,  Cambridge  Edition.  The  stand 
ard  biography  is  Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  by 
James  T.  Morse.  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  wrote  an  essay  which 
appears  as  introduction  to  the  English  Golden  Treasury  edition 
of  fbe  Autocrat;  monographs  on  Holmes  were  written  by  William 
Sloane  Kennedy  and  Emma  E.  Brown.  A  Bibliography  by 
George  B.  Ives  gives  everything  on  the  subject  of  Holmes  and 
his  works,  as  complete  as  Cooke's  Emerson  or  Lowell.  Among 
articles  that  discuss  Holmes  and  his  works  may  be  mentioned: 

[153] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

W.  D.  Howells,  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance;  E.  C.  Sted- 
man,  Poets  of  America;  F.  H.  Underwood,  SCRIBNER'S,  May, 
1879;  Edward  Everett  Hale,  "Personal  Recollections,"  ARENA, 
December,  1895;  E.  P.  Whipple,  Essays  and  Reviews;  J.  G. 
Whittier,  Literary  Recreations  (1872);  C.  F.  Richardson,  American 
Literature. 

WHITTIER 

The  definitive  Riverside  Edition  of  Whittier 's  Works,  revised 
by  himself,  fills  seven  volumes,  published  by  Houghton,  Mifflin 
Co.  (1894).  His  poems,  edited  by  Horace  E.  Scudder,  may 
be  found  in  the  convenient  one  volume  Cambridge  Edition. 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  Wbittier^  written  by  his  literary  executor, 
Samuel  T.  Pickard,  appeared  in  1894.  G.  R.  Carpenter  wrote 
an  excellent  monograph  on  Whittier  for  the  American  Men  of 
Letters  series.  Among  books  and  articles  on  Whittier  may  be 
named:  E.  C.  Stedman,  Poets  of  America;  F.  H.  Underwood, 
a  monograph;  E.  P.  Whipple,  Essays  and  Reviews;  Miss  M.  R. 
Mitford,  Recollections  of  a  Literary  Life;  J.  L.  and  J.  B.  Gilder, 
"Authors  at  Home";  G.  E.  Woodberry,  ATLANTIC,  volume  70; 
H.  P.  Spofford,  HARPER'S,  volume  68;  R.  H.  Stoddard,  SCRIB 
NER'S,  volume  18;  J.  V.  Cheney,  CHAUTAUQUAN,  volume  16. 

THOREAU 

Thoreau's  complete  works  are  issued  by  Houghton,  MifBin 
Co.  in  eleven  volumes,  but  many  reprints  of  Walden  Excur 
sions  and  other  popular  volumes  have  been  issued  recently 
by  other  publishers,  as  the  copyright  has  evidently  expired. 
JValden  has  proved  to  be  Thoreau's  most  popular  book.  Emer 
son  wrote  an  introduction  to  Excursions  which  gives  a  good 
estimate  of  his  friend's  character.  Frank  B.  Sanborn  contributed 
a  monograph  on  Thoreau  to  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series 
and  H.  S.  Salt  wrote  a  Life  which  appeared  in  London  in  1890. 
Some  readable  reminiscences  are  given  by  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning  in  The  Poet  Naturalist.  Critical  estimates  of  Thoreau's 
work  and  influence  may  be  found  in  Lowell's  My  Study  Windows 
and  Stevenson's  Familiar  Studies  in  Men  and  Books. 

PARKMAN 

The  complete  works  of  Francis  Parkman  are  brought  out  by 
Little,  Brown  &  Co.  of  Boston.  The  New  Library  Edition 


[154] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

is  in  thirteen  volumes,  and  includes  the  Life  by  C.  H. 
Farnham.  The  Popular  Edition  is  in  twelve  volumes.  A  desir 
able  form  is  the  Pocket  Edition  in  twelve  volumes,  bound  in  limp 
morocco,  recently  issued.  Parkman's  most  popular  books  are 
The  Overland  'frail  and  'The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac.  The  Life  of 
Francis  Parkman,  by  G.H.  Farnham  (1900),  gives  a  good  account 
of  the  tremendous  work  accomplished  by  this  literary  recluse, 
who  was  nearly  blind  and  an  invalid  for  over  twenty  years. 
John  Fiske,  in  an  article  on  Parkman  in  the  eleventh  edition  of 
the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  says:  "With  all  its  manifold 
instru&iveness  his  work  is  a  narrative  as  entertaining  as  those 
of  Macaulay  or  Froude.  In  judicial  impartiality  Parkman  may 
be  compared  to  Gardiner,  and  for  accuracy  and  learning  with 
Stubbs."  Among  magazine  articles  are  John  Fiske,  ATLANTIC, 
73;  Justin  Winsor,  ATLANTIC,  73;  J.  R.  Lowell,  CENTURY,  23; 
M.  A.  De  Wolfe  Howe,  BOOKMAN,  5;  E.  L.  Godkin,  NATION,  71; 
J.  B.  Gilder,  CRITIC,  23;  F.  H.  Underwood,  LIVING  AGE,  177; 
W.  E.  Simonds,  DIAL,  37. 

MARK  TWAIN 

The  standard  edition  of  Mark  Twain's  works  is  issued  by  the 
Harpers,  and  in  uniform  style  is  also  published  the  Life  of  Mark 
Twain,  by  Albert  Bigelow  Paine,  his  secretary  for  many  years, 
and  his  literary  executor.  The  Limp  Leather  Edition,  recently 
published  by  the  Harpers,  in  twenty-four  volumes,  is  a  con 
venient  and  attractive  form.  Mark  Twain's  early  books  were 
all  brought  out  in  subscription  editions,  with  extraordinary  illus 
trations  in  old-fashioned  wood-cuts.  These  were  gathered  up  in 
1899  and  issued  in  twenty-two  volumes  by  the  American  Pub 
lishing  Co.  of  Hartford.  By  the  aid  of  H.  H.  Rodgers,  Mark 
Twain  was  able  to  secure  the  copyrights  of  these  books  and  to 
turn  them  over  to  the  Harpers.  The  most  popular  of  all  Twain's 
books  is  The  Innocents  Abroad.  Next  to  this  probably  comes 
The  Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn.  Brander  Matthews,  in  an 
article  on  Mark  Twain  in  the  eleventh  edition  of  the  Encyclo 
pedia  Britannica,  says:  "In  Tom  Sawyer,  Huck  Finn  and 
Pudd'nbead  Wilson  there  are  not  only  humor  and  pathos,  char 
acter  and  truth,  but  there  is  also  the  largeness  of  outlook  on  life 
such  as  we  find  only  in  the  works  of  the  masters."  W.  D. 
Howells,  after  Mark  Twain's  death,  contributed  a  series  of 
articles  to  HARPER'S  MAGAZINE  on  his  dead  friend,  which  were 
afterward  printed  in  book  form  under  the  title,  My  Mark  Twain. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

In  this  book  Howells  has  given  the  best  picture  of  the  great 
humorist,  who  was  great  also  as  a  delineator  of  the  life  and 
character  of  the  Southwest.  In  Essays  on  Books ,  William  Lyon 
Phelps  has  an  excellent  chapter  on  Mark  Twain.  Here  are 
some  magazine  articles  on  Mark  Twain:  J.  H.  Twichell,  HAR 
PER'S,  92;  W.  P.  Trent,  BOOKMAN,  3,  "As  a  Historical  Novelist"; 
Dan  De  Quille,  CALIFORNIA  MAGAZINE,  4,  "As  Reporter  in 
San  Francisco";  R.  W.  Gilder,  OUTLOOK,  8,  "Spoken  and 
Written  Art  of  Mark  Twain";  Andrew  Lang,  CRITIC,  19,  "Art 
of  Mark  Twain";  A.  B.  Paine,  HARPER'S,  118,  "Clemens  at 
Stormfield";  Bailey  Millard,  BOOKMAN,  31,  "Mark  Twain  in 
San  Francisco";  Harry  T.  Peck,  BOOKMAN,  31,  "HisJPlace  in 
Literature." 

BRET  HARTE 

Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  publish  the  standard  Riverside  Edition 
of  Bret  Harte's  works.  The  same  firm  has  issued  recently 
the  Overland  Edition,  in  handy  volume  style,  bound  in  flexible 
leather.  Both  sets  come  in  nineteen  volumes  and  are  sold 
separately.  H.  W.  Boynton  in  a  volume  in  the  Contem 
porary  Men  of  Letters  series,  gives  a  good  sketch  of  Harte's  life 
and  work.  T.  Edgar  Pemberton's  Life  of  Bret  Harte  is  note 
worthy  as  giving  the  only  record  of  the  life  of  the  Californian 
short-story  writer  and  poet  in  Scotland  and  England.  Pember- 
ton  was  a  close  friend  of  Harte's  during  all  his  life  abroad,  and 
wrote  several  plays  in  collaboration  with  him.  His  book  con 
tains  many  of  Harte's  letters  to  his  wife  and  friends,  and  it 
shows  the  high  regard  in  which  Harte  was  held  by  many  famous 
English  authors.  The  portraits  and  illustrations  are  very  inter 
esting.  Henry  C.  Merwin's  Bret  Harte  is  an  important  biog 
raphy.  A  Tramp  Through  the  Bret  Harte  Country,  by  Thomas 
Dykes  Beasley,  gives  an  excellent  sketch  of  the  region  made 
famous  by  Harte's  stones. 

HOWELLS 

William  Dean  Howells  has  been  one  of  the  most  prolific  of 
American  writers.  His  works,  partly  issued  in  Boston,  the 
remainder  by  the  Harpers  in  New  York,  fill  over  fifty  volumes, 
not  counting  the  large  number  of  critical  articles  contributed  to 
the  ATLANTIC  and  other  magazines,  which  have  never  been 
reprinted  in  book  form.  Howells  has  been  the  subject  of  a  large 

[156] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

number  of  magazine  articles,  among  which  the  following  may  be 
mentioned:  Brander  Matthews,  FORUM,  32,  "As  a  Critic"; 
H.  H.  Boyesen,  COSMOPOLITAN,  12,  "Howells  and  His  Work"; 
T.  C.  Crawford,  CRITIC,  21,  "Literary  Methods  of  William 
Dean  Howells";  Harriet  W.  Preston,  ATLANTIC,  91;  J.  P.  Mow- 
bray,  CRITIC,  42;  Hamlin  Garland,  NEW  ENGLAND  MAGAZINE, 
2;  William  Sharp,  ACADEMY,  37;  Lillian  Whiting,  AUTHOR,  3, 
"Howells  at  Home";  Van  Wyck  Brooks,  WORLD'S  WORK,  18, 
"Howells  at  Work  at  72";  SCRIBNER'S,  13,  "As  a  Country 
Printer."  Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps  in  his  Essays  on 
Books  has  a  fine  chapter  on  Howells  in  which  he  brings  out  his 
literary  art  and  his  profound  Americanism. 

MARKHAM 

Edwin  Markham's  works,  published  by  Doubleday,  Page  & 
Co.,  are  as  follows:  The  Man  With  the  Hoe,  and  Other  Poems; 
The  Man  With  the  Hoc,  with  Notes  by  the  Author,  an  extremely 
interesting  little  book,  as  it  contains  the  poet's  own  account 
of  the  origin  of  the  poem;  Lincoln,  and  Other  Poems.  I'he  Shoes 
of  Happiness,  and  Other  Poems-,  California  the  Wonderful,  finely 
illustrated,  and  Children  in  Bondage:  The  Child  Labor  Problem. 
Bailey  Millard  has  contributed  a  number  of  articles  to  THE 
BOOKMAN  in  regard  to  Markham,  and  his  work,  and  Poole's 
Index  gives  references  to  the  controversy  which  raged  in  the 
various  magazines  over  The  Man  With  the  Hoe,  soon  after  its 
appearance.  Among  magazine  articles  on  Markham  are: 
Yone  Noguchi,  NATIONAL  MAGAZINE,  volume  21;  B.  O.  Flower, 
ARENA,  27,  "A  Prophet  and  Poet  of  the  Fraternal  State" 
Henry  Meade  Bland,  OVERLAND,  50,  "Markham  and  His  Art." 


Index 


A  Boy's  Town,  135. 

A  Connecticut  Yankee  in  King 
Arthur's  Court,  1 1 6. 

Addison,  25. 

A  Descent  Into  the  Mael 
strom,  35. 

Adventures  of  Captain  Bonne- 
ville,  24. 

Adventures  of  Huckleberry 
Finn,  The,  1 12,  115. 

A  Half  Century  of  Conflict, 
109. 

A  Fable  for  Critics,  76. 

Afloat  and  Ashore,  56. 

After  the  Burial,  75. 

After  the  War,  93. 

Al  Aaraaf,  Tamerlane  and 
Minor  Poems,  33. 

Alcott,  102. 

Alhambra,  The,  24,  26. 

Allan,  Mrs.  John,  31. 

Allan,  John,  32. 

Allston,   Washington,   23. 

American  Scholar,  The,  9,  10. 

A  Modern  Instance,  132. 

Among  My  Books,  76. 

Among  the  Hills,  89,  94. 

Annabel  Lee,  36. 

A  Psalm  of  Life,  64. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  68. 

Arsenal  at  Springfield,  The, 
65. 

Arthur  Dimmesdale,   44. 

Astoria,  24. 

Astor,  John  Jacob,  24. 

Atala,  98. 

Atalanta  in   Calydon,   122. 


Atlantic  Monthly,  80,  82,  91, 

92,  129,  130. 
A  Tramp  Abroad,  114. 
Autocrat    of    the     Breakfast 

Table,  The,  78,  79,  82,  83. 
A  Week  on  the  Concord  and 

Merrimac  Rivers,  98. 

Bacon,  6. 

Balzac,  51. 

Barbara  Frietchie,  93. 

Bartlett,  John,  64. 

Battle  of  Lowell's  Pond,  The, 

61. 

Belfry  of  Bruges,  The,  65. 
Bells,  The,  31,  36. 
Biglow  Papers,  The,  70,  71, 

73.  75- 

Birthmark,  The,  43,  44. 
Blithedale  Romance,  The,  43. 
Bracebridge  Hall,  24,  26. 
Bridge,  Horatio,  42. 
Bright,  John,  94. 
Browning,  58,  60. 
Bryant,  62. 
Burroughs,  96. 
Byron,  22,  70. 

California,     the     Wonderful, 

144. 

Cape  Cod,  101. 
Carlyle,  6,  8,9,  11,77. 
Carson,  Kit,  54. 
Cask  of  Amontillado,  The,  35. 
Catlin,  107. 
Chambers,  37. 
Chambered  Nautilus,  84. 


[159] 


INDEX 


Champlain,  no. 
Chateaubriand,  98. 
Chaucer,  60,  72,  76. 
Children  in  Bondage,  145. 
Christus,  67. 
Christmas,  26. 
Cleveland,  President,  74. 
Cody,  "Buffalo  Bill,"  54. 
Commemoration  Ode,  70,  74. 
Conquest  of  Granada,  The,  24. 
Cooper,  107. 
Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  The, 

106,  108,  no. 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish, 

The,  66,  67. 
Cowley,  60. 

Cross  of  Snow,  The,  67. 
Curtis,  George  William,  42. 

Daisy  Miller,  137. 

Dante,  72,  130. 

Deerslayer,  The,  51,  54. 

Dickens,  57. 

Divine    Comedy    of    Dante, 

The,  67. 
Donatello,  46. 
Don  Juan,  31. 
Drum  Taps,  16,  20. 
Dryden,  60,  76. 

Elia,  79. 

Eliot,  George,  133. 

Elsie  Venner,  78,  85. 

Emerson,  19,  59,  64,  73,  99, 

loo,  129. 

English  Literature,  9. 
Evangeline,  58,  66. 
Excelsior,  64. 
Excursions,  101. 

Faerie  Queene,  The,  41. 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, 
The,  34. 


Familiar  Quotations,  64. 

Fiske,  John,  104. 

Franklin,  128. 

Freedom,  73. 

Free  Press,  Newburyport,  90. 

Frontenac,  109. 

Froude,  72,  77. 

Gabriel  Conroy,  125. 
Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  90, 

93- 

Gazette  (Haverhill),  90. 
Geoffrey  Crayon,  22. 
Gold  Bug,  The,  30,  35. 
Good  Gray  Poet,  The,  17. 
Grovesnor,    Professor,    58. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  19. 

Harlan,  James,  17. 

Harte,  Bret,  113,  128. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  5,  129. 

Hazlitt,  72. 

Heathen    Chinee,    The,    121, 

122. 

Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,  9. 
Hiawatha,  The  Song  of,  58, 

61,  66. 
Higginson,     Thomas     Went- 

worth,  58,  59,  67. 
Hoffman,  Matilda,  23. 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,   59, 

69,  129. 

Hood,  Thomas,  79. 
House  of  the  Seven   Gables, 

The,  43,  45. 
Howells,   William    Dean,   37, 

63,  68,  113,  118,  136. 
Hugo,  58,  59. 
Human  Culture,  9. 
Hyperion,  63. 

Ichabod,  89. 

Indian  Summer,  133. 


[160] 


INDEX 


In  School  Days,  89. 
Innocents  Abroad,  The,  113. 
Irving,  49. 

Italian  Journeys,  130. 
Ivanhoe,  51. 

James,  Henry,  38,   134,   135, 

136. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  3. 
Jefferson,  Joseph,  25. 
Jesuits  in  North  America, 

The,  109. 
Joan  of  Arc,  117. 
Job,  Book  of,  7. 
Jones,  John  Paul,  56. 
Jumping   Frog   of  Calaveras, 

The,  113. 

Kavalero,  66. 
Kipling,  119. 

Knickerbocker's     History    of 
New  York,  23,  26. 

Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  The, 

»31- 

Lady  Windermere's  Fan,  134. 

Lamb,  79. 

La  Salle,  no. 

La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of 

the  Great  West,  109. 
Last  Leaf,  The,  78,  85. 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,  The, 

5i>  54- 

Laus  Deo,  91. 
Leatherstocking,    50,    52,    54, 

55,  56. 
Leaves  of  Grass,  12,  14,  16,  18, 

20. 

Legends  of  New  England,  91. 
Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  The, 

aS- 
Life  of  Columbus,  24. 
Life  on  the  Mississippi,  114. 


Lincoln,  74. 

Lincoln  and  Other  Poems, 
141,144. 

Literary  Friends  and  Acquain 
tance,  63,  129,  135. 

Living  Temple,  The,  84. 

Lloyd-George,  112. 

Longfellow,  42,  74,  87,  89,  129. 

L'Ouverture,  Toussaint,  93. 

Lowell,  n,  59,  60,  129. 

Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  The, 
121,  123. 

Macaulay,  6. 
Maidenhood,  64. 
Maine  Woods,  The,  101. 
Man  with  the  Hoe,  The,  138, 

144. 

Marble  Faun,  The,  43,  45. 
Mather,  Cotton,  n 
Maupassant,  Guy  de,  28. 
McCutcheon,  37. 
Meditations    of   Marcus    Au- 

relius,  106. 

Melville,  Major  Thomas,  85. 
Michael  Angelo,  139. 
Millard,  Bailey,  140. 
Millet,  139. 
Milton,  76. 

Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  109, 1 10. 
Mosses  From  an  Old  Manse, 

37,  42,  43- 

MS.     Found  in  a  Bottle,  35. 
Muir,  John,  96. 
Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue, 

The,  35. 

Musset,  Alfred  de,  28. 
My  Playmate,  89. 
My  Study  Windows,  76. 

National  Era  (Washington), 
ft. 

Nature,  9. 

[161] 


INDEX 


Natty  Bumpo,  52. 

O  Captain,  My  Captain,  16. 
O'Connor,  W.  D.,  17. 
Ojibway,  66. 
Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,  The, 

65. 

"Old  French  War,"  104. 
Old  Ironsides,  78,  81,  85. 
Old  Regime,  The,  109. 
Oregon  Trail,  The,  108,  no. 
Our  Native  Writers,  61. 
Our  Old  Home,  46. 
Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  The, 

121,  123. 
Outre  Mer,  62. 
Overland  Monthly,  121. 

Parkman,  49. 

Parting  of  the  Ways,  The,  73. 

Pathfinders,  The,  54. 

Peabody,  Sophia,  42. 

Phelps,  William  Lyon,  37,  133. 

Philosophy  of  History,  The,  9. 

Pierce,  Franklin,  42. 

Pilot,  The,  54,  56. 

Pilgrim's  Progress,  41. 

Pioneers,  The,  54. 

Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New 

World,  The,  109. 
Pippa  Passes,  31. 
Poe,  48,  59- 
Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table, 

The,  85. 

Pontiac,  49,  109. 
Prairie,  The,  54. 
Prescott,  24. 
Prince  and  the  Pauper,  The, 

116. 
Professor    at    the    Breakfast 

Table,  The,  85. 

Quentin,  Durward,  51. 

[162] 


Raven,  The,  31,36. 
Recollections  of  Joan  of  Arc, 

112,  117. 

Reilly,  Dr.  Joseph  J.,  68. 
Representative  Men,  7,  9. 
Resignation,  65. 
Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  141. 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  25. 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,  The, 

133- 
Roger    Malvin's    Burial,    38, 

43- 

Romola,  133. 
Rousseau,  98. 

Saint-Beuve,  68. 

Scarlet  Letter,  The,  5,  37,  38, 

39,  43,  44- 

Scott,  22,  23,  49,  51. 
Shaw,  Quincy  A.,  107. 
Shakespeare,  58,  59,  69,  72,  76. 
Shoes  of  Happiness,  The,  144. 
Skeleton  in  Armor,  The,  64. 
Sketch  Book,  The,  21,  22,  23, 

25- 

Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,  89. 
Snow  Bound,  89, 92,  93. 
Specimen   Days   and   Collect, 

17,  20. 

Spectator,  The,  25. 
Spy,  The,  53. 
Stedman,  u. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  50, 

88,  103. 

Stratford-on-Avon,  26. 
Strauss,  31. 
Sumner,  Charles,  65. 
Swinburne,  70. 

Tales  of  a  Traveler,  24. 
Tamerlane,  32. 
Tennesse's  Partner,  124. 
Tennyson,  58,  60. 


INDEX 


Tent  on  the  Beach,  The,  94. 

Thackeray,  77. 

Their  Wedding  Journey,  131. 

The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers, 

64. 

Ticknor,  74. 
To  Englishmen,  93. 
To  One  in  Paradise,  36. 
Tolstoi,  95,  134. 
Tom  Sawyer,  115. 
Tonty,  Henri  de,  1 10. 
Treasure  Island,  104. 
Trollope,  Mrs.,  57. 
Turgenieff,  28. 
Twain,  Mark,  128. 
Twice  Told  Tales,  42. 
Twichell,    Reverend    Joseph, 

118. 

Ulalume,  36. 
Under  the  Willows,  76. 
United    States   Literary    Ga 
zette,  62. 

Venice,  An  Italian  Song,  61. 
Venetian  Life,  130. 
Verne,  Jules,  30,  35. 
Village  Blacksmith,  The,  64. 
Virgil,  8 1. 
Virgilia,  142,  143. 


Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  The,  75. 
Voices  of  Freedom,  91 . 
Voices  of  the  Night,  63,  64. 

Walden,  95,  100,  101. 
Walking,  101. 

Wallace,  Alfred  Russell,  141. 
Washers  of  the  Shroud,  The, 

73»  75- 

Watchers,  The,  93. 
Webster,  Daniel,  89. 
What  the  Birds  Said,  93. 
When     Lilacs    Last    in    the 

Dooryard  Bloomed,  1 6. 
Whipple,  ii. 
Whitman,  Walt,  3,   59,  lui, 

113,  128. 
Whittier,  59. 
Wilde,  Oscar,  134. 
William  Wilson,  32. 
Wing  and  Wing,  56. 
Wolf,  1 10. 
Wonderful   One    Hoss    Shay, 

The,  78,  84. 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  The, 

64. 

Young  Goodman  Brown,  38, 
43- 


[163] 


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